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SUPERSTITIONS
ABOUT ANIMALS.

SUPERSTITIONS
ABOUT ANIMALS

BY

FRANK GIBSON.

"The course of nature is the art of God."— Young.

" Nature is always wise in every part."— Lord Thl'elow.

"Nothing in nature is unbeautiful." — Lord Tennyson.

" We defy augury: there is a special Providence in the fall
of a sparrow." — Shakespeare.

"And God saw everything that He had made, and beheld
it was very good." — Genesis.

Condon and TkxocAstk-on-Zym :

THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.

-NEW YORK: 3 EAST I4TH STREET.
1904.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

My sole object in writing this little book has been

to do something towards arousing a more general

interest in a subject which has at no time obtained

the attention it deserves. Yet there is no subject

which so fully repays the thoughtful student as that

of Natural History. In bringing together some of

the most common superstitions about animals, and

dealing with them in a light and popular way, I

trust my object will in some measure be attained.

If by the publication of this unpretentious work

only a little of the prevalent superstition is swept

away, and further interest is created in the wonders

of the animal kingdom, I shall be more than amply

rewarded.

FRANK GIBSON.

Bishop Auckland,
July igo4.

SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

INTRODUCTORY.

It would be interesting to know at what period of
the world's history, and under what circumstances,
mankind first attributed to certain members of the
animal kingdom powers and functions above and
beyond those which they possess through the wis-
dom of their Creator. Was there, indeed, ever a
period when the proper and natural position of each
creature was intelligently understood by all mankind,
and superstition and credulity were non-existent ? If
ever there was such a blissful time — and it is reason-
able to suppose that in a Divine creation there must
have been — how came natural facts of the animal
world to be distorted into unreasonable fiction ?
How came legends and omens and monstrosities into
existence ? Did they arise from men's sinfulness
and fear, or were they the outcome of fertile imagi-
nations desirous of adding to the wonders of
Creation? These are questions that come in-
voluntarily to my mind as I gaze over the great
field which my subject embraces, and see the

2 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

appalling superstition which is rampant in regard
to the animal kingdom. For very much of it there
is an explanation — men's lamentable ignorance
concerning the nature and habits of the various
creatures which have been provided for our use
and the adornment of the world. But this explana-
tion does not cover the whole range of superstition.
It does not provide a solution to the widespread
acceptance of omens and signs, or the popular belief
in marvellous creatures which have had existence
only in unhealthy imagination. The belief in omens
and signs is not governed by education or a want
of it. A man may have all the education which
his age can supply, and his knowledge of natural
history may be in keeping with his other mental
acquirements, yet he may be as superstitious as the
most uncultured and unlearned. In the same way,
a man who understands all the good points of a
dog, and can explain to you why this part of a
certain specimen is too prominent, or why that
part ought to be fuller or more angular, may,
nevertheless, implicitly believe that the baying of
a dog is an infallible sign of an approaching demise.
Nor is superstition in respect of the animal king-
dom limited to any age or any people. In all ages,
so far as we are able to discover, except that which
the Creator blessed with His approval, and among
"all tribes and tongues," superstition has existed in
some of its varied forms, and I think I may safely
include the present age among the rest. For the

INTRODUCTORY. 3

amount of ignorance which is still rife in regard to
animals ; the antiquated ideas which still prevail ;
the threadbare, ofttimes ludicrous, fables which are
still believed in, — do not mark the dawn of the
twentieth century as being much more advanced than
the first so far as superstitions about animals are
concerned. As in the days of Greek and Roman pre-
dominance, the raven and the owl, and in a less
degree the crow, are still regarded as birds of
augury; and while cats in ancient Egypt were ex-
alted to the high estate of deity, the black members
of the tribe in our own country are placed above
their fellows on account of the good fortune which is
said to attend them ; and cats of every colour serve
as infallible barometers.

If^ i were to venture outside the limited area of
my subject, and- t^e you into the broader field
of superstition in general, such as is exemplified by
the auguries of crossed knives, thirteen at table,
weddings on Fridays, new moons, builders' ladders,
and so on, I should have little difficulty in showing
that there is much more superstition in our midst
than most people would credit. But I must confine
myself strictly to the subject embraced by my title,
" Superstitions about Animals." Within this area I
must further limit myself to superstitions which are
more or less common to all parts of the country. To
go beyond this boundary and deal with superstitions
which are purely local, or to include the boundless
legends and fables and auguries of other countries,

4 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

would mean the extension of the work beyond the
compass of a single volume of more than ordinary
dimensions — indeed, I very much fear the extension
would have no ending.

When first I put my pen to paper in the con-
struction of this little book, I intended to deal with
all superstitions so far as they related to animals,
but I quickly perceived where this intention would
lead me. Almost the first omen I took in hand was
that of the Seven Whistlers.

" He the seven birds hath seen, that never part.
Seen the Seven Whistlers in their nightly rounds.
And counted them." — Wordsworth.

But not only did I find that the Seven Whistlers are
regarded as auguries of evil in several parts of the
country, ranging from the north to the south ; I
also found that omens of a very similar kind, though
under different names, are among the most popular
superstitions. On reading again that delightful
work of Buckland's — Curiosities of Natural History,
I observed, for example, that there are certain ill-
omened "whistlers" on the south coast of England
called by the fishermen of Dover the " Herring
Piece," and the fishermen of Folkestone the
"Herring Spar." We may gather from Spenser's
reference to

" The whistler shrill that whoso heares doth dy,"

that these aerial "whistlings" are ominous sounds
of considerable antiquity. Almost all local super-

INTRODUCTORY. 5

stitions may be found under similar manifestations in
other parts of the country, and, in some cases, on
the Continent and even wider afield.
Thus the legend of

" Gabriel's hounds
Doomed, with their impious lord, the flying hart
To chase for ever, on aerial grounds,"

is but another form of several ancient West of Eng-
land stories ; and of the same order are the Aerial
Hunter of Fontainebleau Forest and The Wild
Huntsman of Germany.

" The Wildgrave flies o'er bush and thorn
With many a shriek of helpless woe;
Behind him hound, and horse, and horn.
And ' Harkaway and holla, ho ! '"

Without giving further examples, it will, I think,
be seen that had I carried out my first intention of
dealing with each local superstition, I should have
undertaken a work of far greater magnitude than I
anticipated. I therefore decided that I must, at any
rate for the present, considerably limit my sphere of
operations. I should have liked also to deal with
that branch of superstition which, for want of a
better term, I may call "Animal Nostrums" — that is
to say, potions and charms made from various parts
of animals for the purpose of curing or keeping
away maladies; such, for instance, as that mentioned
by PHny— the gall of a hedgehog mixed with the;
brains of a bat for removing superfluous hairs; the

6 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

right eye of a hedgehog fried in oil to render the
vision as good at night as in the day ; the hair of a
mad dog to cure hydrophobia; black cat's hairs for
removing styes ; adder fat for curing burns or snake
bites; viper broth for skin diseases; the ears of a
hare to prevent harm or accident — a charm I saw
worn by an Irish Yeoman during the Boer War to
ward off the enemy's bullets; and so on. But in-
teresting as these nostrums are in exemplifying the
extraordinary ignorance and credulity which existed
among apothecaries and people in bygone days, and
which exist to no small degree among country folk
to-day, I could not do otherwise than leave them till
another occasion. For the present, as I have inti-
mated, I will deal only with such superstitions about
animals as are more or less known in all parts of the
country; and in doing this I will divide my subject
into three parts: —

1. Signs and omens,

2. Distortion of facts of Natural History.

3. Creatures of the imagination.

SIGNS AND OMENS.

" Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
Augurs and understood relations have
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood." — Shakespeare.

History tells us that in almost all ages signs and
omens have played no small part in affecting men's
conduct, and perhaps, in a lesser degree, this is
true of the world to-day. There are, at the present
time, a large number of people, by no means ignorant
or naturally credulous, who accept omens and signs
as the direct manifestations of the Creator's will.
They argue that it is compatible with reason that
"the birds of the air and beasts of the field" should,
under given circumstances, serve a purpose outside
their usual and natural spheres. This possibility I
will not deny.

If God so will, He can use any part of His marvel-
lous Creation to interpret His purposes, just as He
has drawn lessons from the lily and the sparrow.
But I must suggest that very few of the various
omens, good or ill, are calculated to fill the ordinary
mind with a sense of the supernatural. Moreover,
the omens are of a too general and unpractical
character to be considered seriously. We are told.

8 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

for example, that the baying of a dog is a certain
forewarning of death. Now, as a dog rarely con-
fines its vocal exercises to the hearing of any person
in particular, the omen is without force. It is quite
within the bounds of probability that soon after such
an occurrence one of the numerous persons who
heard it may die. But what will that prove? If,
whenever a dog howled, all the people who heard it
died, or if only two persons heard it and one died,
leaving the other as a witness, then the reputation
of the dog as a kind of agent in advance for a
future state would be established. Similarly, a
"Death-watch" may be heard by a large number
of people among whom there will probably be some
one who will subsequently trace the death of a re-
lative to the warning "tick" of the little beetle.
But let us not be too hasty in poking fun at the
superstitions of other people. It is more than likely
we have our own pet omens and signs, or believe
implicitly in the existence of some strange creatures
which have no place in the animal 'world. Per-
haps we do not believe that dogs foretell death,
but we are certain that toads are " venomous"; and
though we laugh at the superstition that " death-
watches " give fatal warning, we are sure that
dragons are living realities because they are men-
tioned in the Bible. All the same, if we are super-
stitious, we need not fear that we are superstitious
in solitude, for many of the ablest and most pro-
minent men in all countries have had their pet

THE RAVEN.

omens and signs. Shakespeare, as we shall see, has
introduced many superstitions into his writings, and
some wonderful creatures of imagination have been
allowed to find their way even into the Holy
Scriptures.

ILL OMENS.

" Among us mortals, omens drear
Fright and perplex." — Keats.

Let us now notice some of the creatures which are,
or have been in earlier days, regarded as ominous of
bad fortune. First of all there is the Raven. From
the earliest ages the raven has been regarded as one
of the " fatall birds,"

" Such as by nature men abhorre and hate."

No doubt its solitary habits, its grim plumage, its
harsh voice, and its uncleanliness have been the
cause of this general aversion. Noah, we are told,
sent out a raven, which went forth to and fro until
the waters were dried up. The reason plainly was
that there were numerous putrefying carcasses on
which it could feed. The dove, which was subse-
quently sent out, returned to the. Ark because she
"found no rest for the sole of her foot."

Probably from that very day the raven has been a
pariah among birds, while the dove has always been

10 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

a type of constancy, love, and gentleness. The
raven has become

" The fittest bird for murder's track."

The dove is

" The very blessed spirit of peace."

But was it not the raven,

" Swift- winged and strong,''

which Noah selected, in preference to all other birds,
to send forth from the Ark on its lonely voyage of
discovery, and was it not the raven which God
Himself chose to minister tenderly to the needs of
His prophet in the wilderness ? As a fact of natural
history, devotion and constancy are very strong
points in the character of ravens, while bickering
and quarrelsomeness run riot in every dove-cote over
the most trivial matters.

It is in the manner of feeding that the raven
appears at its worst, stripping carcasses and devour-
ing the young of other creatures, whereas the dove
is very strictly clean in its choice of food. The jet-
like blackness of the raven's plumage is another
feature which has told strongly against it, while the
soft, pale plumage of the dove, contrasted with the
sooty garment of the larger bird, is one of the
favourite themes of poets — as if, indeed, it were
"the coat that made the man." But, as we shall
see presently, the raven is not the only bird which has

THE raven's character. II

been saddled with a bad character for being black.
Then, again, the lonely situation of the raven's place
of abode has also been a strong factor in determin-
ing its character. Writers have not been slow in
laying hold of this habit for the purpose of illustra-
tion. When Isaiah wished to depict the utter
desolation which was to fall upon Idumea he
exclaimed :

" The owl and the raven shall dwell in it."

The raven is frequently associated with night as
typifying evil. Edgar Allan Poe addresses it as
coming from

" The night's plutonian shore.''

Aldrich describes night as

" a stealthy raven
Wrapt to the eyes in his black wings."

And, generally speaking, its character is unwhole-
some and repugnant.

"The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to
obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out."

— Proverbs.

" The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge."

— Shakespeare.

" The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead."

— Shelley.

" The raven was screeching, the leaves fast fell.
The sun gazed cheerlessly down on the sight."

— Heine.

2

12 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

These passages serve to show what have been
regarded as the habits and nature of the bird. For
evidence respecting its character as a bird of ill omen
we can go to numerous writers. Edgar Allen Poe,
in his magnificent play upon words, "The Raven,"
says:

" I betook myself to linking
Fancy into fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore,
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous

bird of yore
Meant in croaking ' Never more.'"

Shakespeare more than once mentions the raven as
a bird of ill omen. In Macbeth, for example, we find
the reference:

" The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under our battlements."

And in Othello we have the lines :

" It comes o'er my memory
As doth the raven o'er the infected house.
Boding to all."

Ben Jonson, in his unfinished play. The Sad
Shepherd, writes:

" Now o'erhead sat a raven,
On a sere bough a grown great bird, and hoarse !
Who, al! the while the deer was breaking up.
So croaked and cried for it, as all the huntsmen.
Especially old Scathlock, thought it ominous;
Swore it was Mother Maudlin."

AUGURIES OF BIRDS. 13

Dryden similarly writes :

"Besides, a raven from a withered oak
Left of their lodging was observed to croak.
That omen liked him not."

Even Dr. Watts joins in the general denunciation
of the unfortunate fowl :

" Unlucky birds of hateful name —
Ravens and crows."

And Butler, writing of these two birds in a similar
strain, asks —

" Is it not ominous in all countries
When crows and ravens croak on trees? "

If I were to answer this question, I should be
compelled to acknowledge that in all ages, so far as
we can ascertain, crows and ravens have indeed
been birds of ill omen. Even if we go back to. the
century preceding Christ's birth, we find Virgil
writing of

" The hoarse raven on the blasted bough,"

which,

" By croaking from the left, presaged the coming blow."

And this ancient belief in the raven's gift of augury
was just as prevalent in the earlier days of Grecian
predominance.

The ancients attached very grave importance to
the auguries of birds, and their note and manner of

14 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

flight were studiously observed and used in the art
of soothsaying. Spenser refers to this art in the
words :

" And tryed time yet taught me greater thinges :
The soothe of byrdes by beating of their winges."

Mrs. Browning, in Prometheus Bound, also mentions
the ancient auguries:

" And defined as plain
The wayside omens, — flights of crook-clawed birds, —
Showed which are, by their nature, fortunate,
And which not so."

Jonson, at some length, in The Masque of Augurs,
deals with this special branch of "the tuneful art of
augury":

"Apollo (singing). Then forth and show the several
flights
Your birds have made, or what the wing
Or voice in augury doth bring,
Which hand the crow cried on, how high
The vulture or the heme did fly;
What wing the swan made, and the dove,
The stork, and which did get above;
Show all the birds of food or prey,
The night-crow, swallow, or the kite,
Lefthese have neither right.
Chorus. Nor part.

In this night's art.
Apollo (after the auguries are interpreted). The signs are
lucky all, and right.
There hath not been a voice, or flight,
Of ill presage —

THE RAVEN TURNS BLACK. 15

Linus. The bird that brings

Her augury alone to kings,

The dove, hath flown. —
Orpheus. And to thy [King James I.] peace,

Fortune and the Fates increase.
Branchus. Minerva's hernshaw, and her owl,

Do both proclaim, thou shalt control

The course of things.
Idmon. As now they be

With tumult carried,
Apollo. And live free

From hatred, faction, or the fear

To blast the olive thou dost wear."

I need hardly say that in those ancient days of
prevalent credulity the raven, the owl, and the crow
were made the subjects of many weird legends.
None of these, I think, is quainter than how the
raven, or as another rendering has it, the crow, was
transformed from swan-like whiteness to the very
extreme, the most funereal black. It was on account
of his "chattering tongue," or his desire to be the
first bringer of evil news, as Ovid informs us, that
the raven lost his pristine beauty, and was allowed no
longer to perch among white birds, " This bird was
formerly of a silver hue," says the ancient writer
(translated by Henry T. Riley, M.A.), "with snow-
white feathers, so that he equalled the doves, entirely
without spot; nor would he give place to the geese
that were to save the Capitol by their watchful voice,
nor to the swan haunting the streams. His tongue
was the cause of his disgrace ; his chattering tongue
being the cause, that the colour which was white is

l6 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

now the reverse." Or, as Addison renders the same
passage in verse :

" The raven once in snowy plumes was drest,
White as the whitest dove's unsuUy'd breast,
Fair as the guardian of the Capitol,
Soft as the swan, a large and lovely fowl ;
His tongue, his prating tongue had changed him quite
To sooty blackness from the purest white."

The raven, bird of Phoebus, having discovered that
Larisssen Coronis, than whom "there was no one
more beauteous in all Hsemonia," had been un-
faithful to his master, winged his way to the god
and informed him of his mistress's infidelity.

" On hearing the crime of his mistress his laurel
fell down ; and at the same moment his usual looks,
his plectrum, and his colour, forsook the god. And
as his mind was now burning with swelling rage, he
took up his wonted arms, and levelled his bow bent
from the extremities, and pierced with an unerring
shaft, that bosom that had been so often pressed to
his own breast. Wounded, she uttered a groan, and,
drawing the steel from out of the wound, she bathed
her white limbs with purple blood ; and . . . poured
forth her life together with her blood. A deadly
coldness took possession of her body deprived of
life.

"The lover, too late, alas! repents of his cruel
vengeance, and blames himself that he listened to
the bird, and that he was so infuriated. He hates

A BIRD TO BE SHUNNED. I7

the bird, through which he was forced to know of
the crime, and the cause of his sorrow; he hates,
too, the string, the bow, and his hand ; and together
with his hand, those rash weapons, the arrows. He
cherishes her fallen to the ground, and by late
resources endeavours to conquer her destiny; and
in vain he practises his physical arts. . . . And he
forbade the raven, expecting for himself the reward
of his tongue that told no untruth, to perch any
longer among the white birds."

So that is how the raven became black ! But the
awe and reverence with which the ancients regarded
it in time changed to loathing and detestation. Its
mission, as a prophet by which evil things might be
averted, no longer obtained, and it became simply
an "unclean fowl" whose associations were loath-
some and deadly.

" While o'er those caitiffs where they lie.
The wolf shall snarl, the ravens cry."

Even in resting, it evinced a preference for decay.

" O'erhead sat a raven
On a sere hough."— /ofison.

" Or raven on a 6/asied oak." — Scott.

" He passes now the doddered od^.
Ye heard the startled raven cxosk."— Scott.

" A raven from a withered oak." — Dryden.

l8 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

As the ensign of the devastating Danes, it struck
terror into the bold hearts of our forefathers,

" When Denmark's raven soared on high.
Triumphant through Northumbrian sky.
Till hovering near, \\^x fatal croak
Bade Reged's Britons dread the yoke,
And the broad shadow of her wing
Blackened each cataract and spring." — Scott.

Its very eyes have been likened to living coals or
flashes of fire.

" Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable express-
ing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's
core." — E. A. Foe.

" And aloft upon the ridge-pole
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
Sat with fiery eyes." — Longfellow.

" Why, any time of night, you may see his eyes in my
dark room, shining like two sparks. And every night, and
all night too, he's broad awake." — Dickens.

In addition to being universally regarded as un-
canny, and mostly branded as a "thing of evil,"
the raven has not escaped being directly associated
writh the Realms of Darkness. Edgar Allan Poe had
no doubt that its origin was distinctly " evil," and it
would seem that his secret opinion of the immortal
" Raven" was that it also consisted both of " fiend "
and "devil."

THE CROW. 19

But Charles Dickens is in no way dubious
respecting the origin of the equally immortal
"Grip." He tells us that the bird "asserted his
brimstone birth and parentage with great distinct-
ness," and Grip, "as if exulting in his infernal
character," persistently declared, whenever he had
the opportunity, " I'm a devil, I'm a devil!"

There is, perhaps, scarcely need to say that the
character of the raven has been stigmatised without
the least justification. Apart from its universal
association with evil augury, it has always been
regarded as a cruel parent, turning its young out
of their nest before they have learned to provide for
their own sustenance; whereas, no bird existing is
more solicitous concerning the welfare of its young
than is the raven.

As we have seen from two of the foregoing
quotations, the Crow is mentioned in company with
the raven as " a thing of evil," and its character as
a bird of "ill omen" seems to be equally ancient.
No doubt its colour, which has made its name
proverbial, together with its nasty habits, have
singled it out for popular disfavour. Like the
raven, it is generally associated with death and
decay, and its chosen resting-place is away from
colour and foliage.

" A crow with sidelong eye
Watched from a dead hough.''

20 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

In another respect also it resembles its larger
relative the raven — its plumage was formerly white,
at any rate so we are told, and its transformation
was in the same way brought about by the
unguarded use of a chattering tongue. The story
is in all respects like that of Phoebus and Coronis,
but is well worth repeating in the quaint, homely
language of the poet Chaucer. Says he —

"When Phebus dwelled here in erth adoun,
As olde bookes maken mentioun,
He was the most lusty bacheler
Of all this world, and eke the best archer."

And taking him all round he was

" The semelieste man
That is or was, sithen the world began."

" Now had this Phebus in his house a crowe.
Which in a cage he fostered many a day.
And taught it speken, as men teche a jay.
Whit was this crowe, as is a snow-whit swan,
And contrefete the speche of every man
He coude, when he shulde tell a tale.
Therwith in all this world no nightingale
He coude by an hundred thousand del
Singen so wonder merily and wel."

But Phebus possessed more than a crow in a
cage.

" Now had this Phebus in his hous a wif,
Which that he loved more than his lif,
And night and day did ever his diligence
Hire for to plese, and don hire reverence."

CHAUCER'S TALE OF THE CROW. 21

Phebus, however, was a jealous man, and tried
to keep his " wife" from receiving the attentions of
any other swain ; but, says Chaucer, it is " labour
in vain" to watch "a shrewe," for they cannot be
watched. Take any bird and put it in a cage,
he says, foster it tenderly with meat and drink,
and keep it clean, and, although the cage be golden,
it will "twenty thousand fold" live in a forest that
is " wilde and cold" eating worms and "swiche
wretchednesse." So also a cat, though fostered and
fed on milk and tender flesh, will leave these dainties
if she

" see a mous go by the wall."

And so it was with this

"Wif
Which that he loved more than his lif."

No sooner was Phebus's back turned than she

" sent for hire lemman "

— sent for her lover — and the crow looked down
from his perch, but

" sayde never a word."

However, when Phebus returned, the crow opened
his heart and his beak and told him how false was
this woman whom he loved so truly; and Phebus,
thinking his heart was breaking, drew his bow and
sent an arrow quivering into his wife's body. Then,
filled with remorse for what he had done, he turned

22 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Upon the crow furiously and cursed it for making so
free use of its scurrilous tongue.

"And to the crowe, O false thefe, said he,
I wol thee quite anon thy false tale.
Thou song whilom, like any nightingale,
Now Shalt thou, false thefe, thy song forgon,
And eke thy white feathers, everich on,
Ne never in all thy lif ne shalt thou speke;
Thus shul men on a traitour ben awreke.
Thou and thin ofspring ever shul be blake,
Ne never swete noise shul ye make.
But ever crie ageins tempest and rain.
In token that thrugh thee my wif is slain.
And to the crowe be stert, and that anon,
And pulled his white fethers everich on.
And made him blak, and raft him all his song
And eke his speche, and out at dore him flong
Unto the devil, which I him betake;
And for this cause ben alle crowes blake."

And, pointing a sound moral from the lot of the
unfortunate "crowe," deprived of its sweet song
and snowy plumage, Chaucer sagely adds:

" My son, beware, and be non auctour newe [no bearer]
Of tidings, whether they ben false or trewe;
Wher so thou come, amonges high or lowe,
Kepe well thy tonge, and thinke upon the crowe."

Under certain circumstances the Rook is also
regarded as a bird of ill omen. Country pepple tell
us that when a colony of rooks forsake their accus-
tomed building-place it may be accepted as a sure
sign that a great calamity is about to fall on the

THE JACKDAW AND CHOUGH. 23

family to whom the rookery belongs ; and a single
rook sitting lonely upon a house-top is accepted by
many as ominous of death. Besides being regarded
as birds of ill omen, rooks are supposed to possess
the villainous habit of plucking out the eyes of
persons sleeping in open places ; and it is further
said of them that whenever they pass over a corpse
they utter a weird, uncanny cry. In respect of the
former, it need only be said that rooks are not car-
nivorous birds like crows or ravens ; and as for the
latter, I have not yet met with any one who has
taken special notice of the birds during a funeral
procession, or at an interment, to be able to say how
they conduct themselves under such circumstances.
As I have already pointed out, both the crow and the
raven have most probably derived much of their
unpleasant notoriety from their sombre plumage,
and it is just as likely that the rook comes under the
same category for the same reason.

Even our gay, chattering friend, the Jackdaw, is
not allowed to go unscathed. Cowper describes it
as a bird which

" By his coat
And by the hoarseness of his note.
Might be supposed to be a crow."

And he classes him among

" Birds obscene of ominous note,"

a category in which he also places the Chough,
called by some the " red-billed jackdaw."

24 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Dryden also associates birds of a black feather in
one group :

" To Crows the like impartial grace affords,
And Choughs and Daws and such republic birds."

Longfellow includes the Jay amongst the ^* black
marauders":

" Kahgahgee, the king of ravens,
Gathered all his black marauders,
Crows and blackbirds, jays and ravens
Clamorous on the dusky tree-tops."

And, as if there were something threatening in the
voices of the "black marauders," as "from all the
neighbouring tree-tops " they " cawed and croaked,"

" ' Ugh 1' the old men all responded,
From their seats beneath the pine-trees! "

Shakespeare, as we have seen, gives the Raven a
primary place amongst birds of evil augury, and, in
at least one passage, puts the Crow in a similarly
notorious position:

"And thou treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender makest
With the breath thou givest and takest
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go."

Then, as if to complete the list, he adds the Magpie :

" Augurs and understood relations have
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood."

THE MAGPIE AND OWL. 2$

It is, however, only when it appears singly that the
magpie is a prognosticator of evil. On the other
hand, two or more are said to be indicative of good
fortune. Cowper, for instance, asserts that he
" rejoiced"

" If two auspicious magpies crossed my way,"

a reference, evidently, to the old rhyme :

" One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a wedding,
Four for a birth.''

The Owl, which not infrequently we find men-
tioned in company with the raven, bears the same
character as a foreteller of evil. The reason for this
may be found in its love of solitude, its habit of turn-
ing night into day, its silent, spectral flight, and its
melancholy cry. Those who have heard these weird,
mournfvil notes in the dead of night will quite
appreciate the prophet Micah's simile when he
speaks pf the

" Mourning as the owls.''

In South Africa I have heard this "mourning" or
"hooting" on the kopjes at night, and it is a
strange, uncanny cry, quite calculated to create a
" creepy " sensation, if not actually of foreboding.

Whenever it is mentioned in Scripture or in poetry,
the owl, inclusive of all the species, is surrounded
with an atmosphere of gloom, sadness, and solitude.

26 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

The Psalmist leads the way in this respect by
writing of " the owl of ruined places."

Isaiah, when he describes the downfall of Idumea,
says :

"The screech owl [or night-monster] shall rest there.
There shall the great owl rest, and gather under her
shadow."

Gray, in his immortal "Elegy," describes this
feature in the following beautiful lines: —

" Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl doth to the moon complain
Of such as, wand'ring near her secret boVr,
Molest her ancient, solitary reign."

In the same strain Burns, in his charmingly
expressed ode "To the Owl," writes:

" Shut out, lone bird ! from all the feather'd train.
To tell thy sorrows to th' unheeding gloom:
No friend to pity when thou dost complain,
Grief all thy thought, and solitude thy home."

Truly a beautifully-worded but melancholy, and,
in one sense, an inaccurate description. There is
no adequate reason to suppose that the owl is a
more unhappy bird than, say, the canary or the sky-
lark. No doubt it is solely the nocturnal habits of
the "lone bird" which have surrounded it with an
atmosphere so gloomy and pathetic. The song of
the nightingale, probably for the same reason, has in
it a vein of sweet melancholy which is not to be

THE SCREECH OWL. 27

found ill the song of the robin, or the lark, or any
other day-time warbler.

In nearly all references to the owl as a bird of
evil omen, the species mentioned is the screech owl,
or, as we know it in England, the " barn owl."

" But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precursor of the fiend.
Augur of the fever's end,

To this troop come thou not near ! "

— Shakespeare.

As far back as history takes us, and in all
countries where the unfortunate bird is known, it
has been burdened with the foulest character of any
of the "feathered tribe." To go back only to the
days of Rome, Virgil writes :

" With a boding note
The solitary screech owl strains his throat.
And on a chimney-top, or turret height.
With song obscene disturbs the silence of the night."

And, speaking of the same period, Butler writes:

" The Roman senate, when within
The city wall an owl was seen,
Did cause their clergy with lustrations

The round-faced prodigy t' avert
From doing town or country hurt."

Ovid, writing in the same strain, speaks of the

3

aS SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

owl as "an accursed bird," and further describes
Ascalaphus as becoming

" An obscene bird, the foreboder of approaching woe, a
lazy owl, a direful omen to mortals.''

Hardly is it necessary to say that among the an-
cients the screech owl was the subject of numerous
legends, each of which emphasises its character as a
bird of ill repute. Nothing shows more clearly how
cordially was this bird detested, though at the same
time feared, than the fable of Nyctimene's transforma-
tion into an owl for committing a heinous crime.
And it is because of this foul sin, so the ancient
legend says, that the owl secludes herself from the
company of all other birds and ventures forth only
under cover of darkness.

"She is a bird indeed; but being conscious of her crime
she avoids the human gaze and the light, and conceals her
shame in the darkness; and by all the birds she is expelled
entirely from the sky." — Ovid.

Coming to mediaeval days, we find that the
character of the owl has not improved in popular
opinion.

"Thtghastlie owl her grievous inne [abode] doth keep.''

— Spenser.

While Shakespeare, writing about the same
period, makes several references to the bird's ill-
boding tongue, among which are the following: —

POETS AND THE OWL, 29

" Whilst the screech owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe,
In remembrance of a shroud."

— "A Midsummer Nights Dream."

" Bring forth that fatal screech owl to our house,
That nothing sung but death to us and ours ;
Now death shall stop his dismal threatening sound,
And his ill-boding tongue no more shall speak."

—''Henry VIP (Part III.).

Still in later days the owl retains its notoriety.

" Again the shriek-owl shrieks — ungracious sound !
I'll hear no more ; it makes one's blood run cold."

— Robert Blair.

" What yonder rings .' what yonder sings ?

Why shrieks the owlet grey ? . . .
'Tis death-bells' clang, 'tis funeral song.

The body to the cXz.-^."— Scott.

" The bird of omen with incessant scream,
To melancholy thoughts awakes the soul."

— Chatterton.

" A monstrous owl across us flies.
Bad omen — this new match can't be a happy one."

— Keats.

" Down in a dark and solitary vale.
Where the screech owl sings her fatal tale."

— Chatterton.

" No Fatal Owle the Bedstead keeps.
With direful notes to fright your sleeps."

— Herrick,

30 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Ben Jonson writes of the "shrieks of luckless
owls"; Keats, the "gloom-bird's hated screech";
Cowper, "the boding owl"; Moore, "the death-
bird's cry"; Byron, "the owlet whose notes the dark
fiend of midnight deplores." And many another
poet joins these in denouncing the unlucky fowl as
" a thing of evil." To reset an old-time adage —
"Give an owl a bad name and shoot it." And this
is precisely what happens to the poor bird. What
with collectors and gamekeepers and sportsmen, the
owl's life usually is short and none too sweet. In
the destruction of these useful birds gamekeepers are
the greatest offenders. " Kill everything but game "
seems to be the rule by which these men are guided,
so they shoot all manner of " vermin " from owls to
jays and woodpeckers. To make a careful and
intelligent study of the woodland Inhabitants which
they see from day to day does not seem to them to
be a course they should pursue. If they studied the
nature and habits of owls they would not be long in
discovering that the "bird of ill omen" was their
friend and not their enemy. Because now and again
an owl has been seen with a young pheasant in its
possession, seems conclusive enough evidence to the
ordinary keeper that it is a marauder which must
forthwith be put out of the way of doing further harm.
But it is a rare occurrence for an owl to seek young
pheasants for food ; and when it has been discovered
with this kind of game in its possession, the young
pheasant would, I think, on examination prove to be

THE LAPWING. 3I

a delicate straggler. Even supposing that an owl
actually does now and again pick up a small bird,
can this be fairly set against the vast number of rats
and mice which it kills as its natural food ?

Of very different habits and appearance from the
owl is the graceful Lapwing, wheeling and " lapping"
in its lazy flight. Who would suppose that so pretty
and harmless a bird as this tufted frequenter of our
meadows would commend itself to the imagination of
superstitious minds ? Yet the lapwing has long been
regarded in Scotland as a bird of ill omen. Grahame,
in his Birds of Scotland, more than once refers to
the lapwing as an augury of evil, and gives the story
from which it derived its evil character. So the
story goes, when the sturdy Covenanters were
seeking refuge among the wilds of Scotland from
the persecution of the King's troops, the lapwings,
hovering over the heads of the refugees, betrayed
their whereabouts to the keen eyes of their pursuers.
And so it came to pass that the lapwing has become
known in Scotland as a bird of "ill omen." Poor,
unfortunate waller ! How much of the story is fact,
and how much is of the same loose imagination that
has made the yellowhammer a pariah among birds,
and the wren a malignant atom to be ruthlessly
hunted down on St. Stephen's Day? But perhaps
we can go back centuries before the days of the
Covenanters for the origin of the lapwing's ill repute,
for was it not into the likeness of one of these grace-

32 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

ful birds that cruel King Tereus was transformed
when pursuing with his drawn sword the outraged
Philomela? As Spenser puts it:

" The Thracian king lamenting sore,
Turned to a lapwing, doeth them uprayde;"

and Chaucer, no doubt thinking of the same fable —

" The false lapwing, full of trecherie."

Or, as a Milanese song renders the ancient legend :

" There once was a king
As wicked as possible;
The Lord changed him
Into a upoe."

But in England the ancient myth is associated with
the lapwing and not the hoopoe, though each is a
bird "upon whose head stands a crested plume."
This promiscuous interchanging of the names may
be found in the lists of unclean fowl mentioned in
Leviticus and Deuteronomy, where the same bird is
rendered by the Authorised Version "lapwing," and
by the Revised Version " hoopoe," the latter render-
ing also being supported by the Vulgate. Or it may
be that the lapwing's unpleasant notoriety is derived
solely from its melancholy cry, in the same way that
the owl unquestionably is hated for its "dismal,
threatening sound," its "fatal screech." In any
case, the two great poets of Scotland, who must
have been often within hearing of its wailful voice,

THE STORMY PETRfeL. 35

ftiid have noted its weitd, circling flight, have given
it an atmosphere of gloom and melancholy. Burns,
when solicitous for the peace of his Mary sleeping by
" Swreet Afton," admonishes the bird in the lines:

" Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear,
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair."

And Sir Walter Scott, wrriting of the "gentle lover
of nature " who was found dead on Helvellyn, says:

" And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying.
Thy obsequies sung by the grey plover flying."

So that, when we are walking in the stillness of the
evening, and we hear near at hand a sad, wailful
scream like some "lost soul forlorn," we may re-
member that we are listening to the "foreboding"
cry which brought destruction to the sturdy bands of
Covenanters, and sang the obsequies over the stark
body of the poor dead "lover of nature!" Or, if
our fancy turns to higher flights, we can, in the
same stillness, think that here the lustful King of
Thrace, turned into a lapwing, for ever wails the
ravishment of poor, confiding Philomela.

Another bird which is regarded as a bird of ill
omen is the Stormy Petrel. Sailors firmly believe
that the petrel is a precursor of stormy weather.
Theodore Watt mentions this strange belief when he
writes :

"Bird whom I welcomed, while the sailors -cursed."

34 SUPERStltlONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

And Procter, writing in the same strain, declares
that

" The petrel telleth her tale in vain,
For the mariner curseth the warning bird
Which bringeth him news of the storm unheard."

It would scarcely be supposed that among the
creatures which are said to foretell a calamity, super-
stitious people have included the common domestic
Pigeon. There is nothing in the appearance or habits
of this pretty, stately bird which should place it
on the black list of birds of ill omen, and certainly
under ordinary conditions its name is not associated
with anything that is evil ; but there is one aspect
under which it is regarded by many people to be a
sure foreteller of death — that is when it enters a
room through an open window. Now, personally I
regard with something like ridicule so simple a form
of superstition, and would give a welcome to any
strange pigeon which did me the honour of seeking
a refuge in my room. But, notwithstanding, I can
recall the actual case of an old friend of mine dying
in a room where a pigeon had a few days previously
entered by the window. The pigeon happened to be
one of my own, and my aged friend lectured me
pretty severely on allowing the bird to spoil the ■
neatness of his apartment. He was hale and
hearty at the time, but a few days later he
died in that very room. Not long ago I men-
tioned this incident casually to a friend, and

A PORTENTOUS PIGEON. 35

although he had not heard of the superstition asso-
ciated with it, he curiously enough declared that
a week before the death of his mother a stray
pigeon was caught in the room in which she sub-
sequently died.

These two remarkable incidents, quoted from my
own experience, will no doubt be considered con-
clusive evidence, by some of my readers, that under
the circumstances stated a pigeon is a sure foreteller
of death ; but we must not so quickly jump to
illogical conclusions. A starling — much more
sombre and harsh-voiced than any pigeon — which
recently I captured in a neighbour's room, might
just as reasonably be accepted as a fore-warner of
death. Whereas it is more sensible to suppose that
the affrighted bird which so energetically nibbled at
my thumbs, accidentally fluttered down the chimney
and heartily wished himself back on the chimney-top
instead of in a strange room, poked and peered at
by his mortal enemy man.

Similar to the above-mentioned superstitions is
the belief that a swallow alighting on a window-
sill foretells death to some person residing in, or
associated with persons living in, the house. But
a falling picture also, we are told, forewarns us of
the same calamity, and there are many other
incidents equally portentous which I need not
mention. One, however, is worth dealing with
somewhat fully, as it is almost universally accepted

36 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

as a sign of approaching death. The fateful augur,
in this case, is the little beetle {Anobium striatum),
or, as it is commonly known, the "Death watch,"
which, by its quaint "ticking" or tapping, sets
people's hearts a-beating apprehensively. Who has
not, at one time or another, heard this little creature
playing his merry pranks in the wainscotting or
cupboard when everything else has been silent ?
Not very long ago I heard one of these "death
watches" which, I was told, had been " ticking" at
intervals for several weeks, but no one in the farm-
house where it was located has died in consequence.
As a matter of fact, one of the occupants of the
room soon afterwards married very happily, and the
other is now holding a responsible position in South
Africa. So much for the fateful ticking of this
particular specimen ! In reality, putting all super-
stition aside, the frail little creature, which so
innocently has earned an unenviable character,
" ticks " for no other purpose than to attract the
attention of its mate. Under like circumstances the
coster, who whistles under his donah's window when
he wishes her to come out for a stroll, should be
regarded by the superstitious as a creature of ill
omen.

Several of our poets have assisted in keeping alive
this old-time superstition. Dean Swift mentions it
in the following lines, though in a desire to parti-
cularise he erroneously describes the " death watch"
as "^a worm " or " a maggot ": —

THE DEATH-WATCH. 37

" A wood worm,
That lies in old wood like a hare in her form,
With teeth or with claws it will bite or will scratch,
And chambermaids christen this worm ' death watch 'y
Because like a watch it always cries ' click.'
For sure as a gun they will give up the ghost
If the maggot cries 'click' when it scratches the post."

Gay also refers to the "death watch" in the
passage —

" The wether's bell
Before the drooping flock toU'd forth her knell,
The solemn death -watch clicked the hour she died."

Similarly, Wordsworth adjures us to

" Take
A fearful apprehension from the owl
Or death watch"

Walter Thornbury, in his dramatic description of
" The Death of th' Owd Squire," tells us that

"The death watch, sure enough, tick'd loud just over th'
owd mare's head,
Tho' he'd never once been heard up there since master's
boy lay dead."

And Tennyson, in his poem " Forlorn," gives the
old superstition in the words :

" You that lie with wasted lungs
Waiting for your summons . . .
In the night, O the night !
O the death watch beating ! "

38 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

! The Baying of a Dog as a sure foretelling of death
is one of the most ancient and widespread super-
stitions. Certainly nothing can so easily create a
feeling of awe and apprehension as the weird,
uncanny howling of a dog in the dead of night.
Any one may justly be excused a superstitious belief
in this respect. Never shall I forget the hideous
howling of a retriever at midnight some years ago,
when I was sailing in the Black Sea — or, to be more
accurate, perhaps I ought to use the more applicable
word "baying," for the noise, as distinguishable
from mere howhng, was like a hopeless wail. The
night was as dark as pitch ; that awful darkness
which is peculiar to the sea. There was no sound
save the panting of the engines and the beating of
the propeller. I was sitting in my cabin reading for
a brief spell before turning in, when of a sudden
there arose, close to my door, such a villainous,,
unearthly baying that my blood seemed to turn cold
in my veins, and I believe my hair stood upright.
More than anything, it might have been the cry of a
soul shut out from Everlasting Life. Then everything
was still again. A moment later the negro steward
rushed into the cabin, with his big eyes rolling and
his black face twitching with abject fright.

" One of us has got to die, sir," he cried. " The
dog howl, and it means death. One of us bound to
die."

It seems almost as good as verifying the super-
stition to say that, within a few days, a sailor was

THE HOWLING OF DOGS. 39

killed on the very spot where the retriever had
howled. Such, however, is a fact, and I had the
unhappy duty of holding the poor fellow in my arms
when, in great agony, he drew his last breath.

Many allusions are made in our own literature to
this superstition. In Shakespeare's King Henry VI.
we have a direct reference to the howling of dogs as
" an evil sign," and among others of his plays there
are also passages in which the howling is attended
with most dismal phenomena. The reference
mentioned is :

" The owl shrieked at thy birth, an evil sign,
The night-crow cried, aboding trickless time,
Dogs howled, and hideous tempests tore down trees.''

In "Cumnor Hall," a poem by W. J. Mickle, which
suggested to Sir Walter Scott the groundwork of his
romance Kenilworth, there is a reference to the
superstition :

" The death-bell thrice was heard to ring,
An aerial voice was heard to call.
And thrice the raven flapped his wing
Around the towers of Cumnor Hall.

The mastiff howled ai village door.
The oaks were shattered on the green;

Woe was the hour, for never more
That hapless Countess e'er was seen."

It may be merely a coincidence, but there are three
incidents common to the two foregoing quotations.

40 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

When Gloucester was born, so Shakespeare makes
King Henry say, the night-crow cried, 'dogs howled,
and trees were torn down. At the death of the
Countess, Mickle tells us, an aerial voice called, the
mastiff howled, and oaks were shattered ; and if we
extend the passage in King Henry VI. , we find that
there is yet another common feature :

" The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top; "

or, as " Cumnor Hall " has it:

" Thrice the raven flapped his wing."

Among Keats's poems we also find the superstition
directly referred to :

" For as among mortals omens drear fright and perplex,
Dog^s howl or gloom-birds hated screech."

In the quotations from Shakespeare and Keats we
find that the howling is accepted as an omen of evil
things not come to pass ; whereas, in "Cumnor Hall,"
the howling takes place at the time of the violent
death of the Countess. Shakespeare evidently goes
beyond the generally accepted significance of the
incident in making the animal apprehend, at the birth
of Gloucester, a calamity which was not to take place
until he had reached manhood. But in the other
quotations we have direct references to what is a
common belief, far more common than many will
credit, that dogs, with a finer sense than human
beings possess, are able to see spirits.

DOGS AND death's ANGEL. 4I

In this country the supposition is that dogs see the
spirits of those who, loosed from mortal flesh, move
about in the world of space which envelops our
Earth ; or that, by even a finer sense, like that attri-
buted to the shark, they are able to foreknow of
death's approach or discern its presence. Shake-
speare, no doubt familiar with this belief, associates
the howling of the ban dogs with the midnight hour
when spirits are said to be set at liberty, a subject I
shall refer to later.

" Ban dogs howl
And spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves.''

In the East the popular belief is similar, yet varies
in one particular. While in England it is supposed
that dogs see ghosts "in general," the Eastern
belief is that dogs are able to perceive the dread
form of the Angel of Death. Sir Richard Burton,
the famous traveller, on this point says : ' ' There are
also certain superstitions about the dog resembling
ours, only, as usual more poetical and less gro-
tesque, current in El Hejaz. Most people believe
that when the animal howls without apparent cause
in the neighbourhood of a house, it forebodes death
to one of the inmates. For the dog, they say, can
distinguish the awful form of Azrael, the angel of
death, hovering over the doomed abode, whereas
man's spiritual sight is dull and dim by reason of his
sins."

In Longfellow's " Golden Legend" there is a con-

42 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

versation between a Jewish Rabbi and Judas Iscariot
touching upon the same superstition :

"Rabbi. Come hither, Judas Iscariot.

Say, if thy lesson thou hast got
From thy Rabbinical Book or not.
Why howls the dog at night .?
Judas. In the Rabbinical Book, it saith

The dogs howl, when, with icy breath
Great Sammael, the Angel of Death,
Takes through the town his flight !"

Among sailors there is a very common supersti-
tion, that a Shark following in the wake of a vessel
unmistakably foretells the death of some person on
board. Such a belief is, so far as I personally have
had the opportunity of observing, without the least
foundation in fact. On a voyage to South Africa a
few years ago I noticed, when nearing the Equator,
that a very large, sinister-looking shark kept up with
the vessel for many miles, but the passage concluded
under the most favourable and happy circumstances ;
no one died, and very few were even sea-sick.
Curiously enough, however, when I returned to
England on a large liner fitted up as a hospital ship,
with accommodation for more than a thousand
invalids, we never sighted a shark from Capetown
to Southampton, though there were many cases of
sickness on board, mid one of the passengers was
buried at sea. Probably all the sharks were busy
following in the wake of other vessels !

This old superstition is well brought out in a

SHARKS SCENTING DEATH. 43

poem entitled "The Return of the Admiral," by
Procter :

" How gallantly, how merrily

We ride along the sea !
The morning is all sunshine,

The wind is blowing free :
The billows are all sparkling,
And bounding in the light."

But

"In our wake, like any servant,
Follows ever the bold shark."

Then the admiral of the fleet, who

" Grew paler
And paler as we flew,"

" Spied the creature
That kept following in our lee."

He seemed to be aware of the direful augury, for

" He shook — 'twas but an instant ;
For speedily the pride
Ran crimson to his heart.
Till all chances he defied."

But the admiral's defiance was in vain, for

"That night a horrid whisper

Fell on us where we lay;
And we knew our fine old admiral

Was changing into clay;
And we heard the wash of waters,

Though nothing could we see.
And a whistle and a plunge

Among the billows in our lee !

44 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

'Till dawn we watched the body,

In its dead and ghastly sleep;
And next evening, at sunset,

It was slung into the deep !
And never from that moment, —

Save one shudder through the sea, —
Saw we or heard the shark

That had followed in our lee ! "

Of a less dramatic character, but bearing out the
old superstition among sailors, is a passage in the
biography of the late Rev. Bryan Roe, the well-
known Wesleyan missionary, who died on the West
Coast of Africa : —

"Two or three sharks it may be are following in the
vessel's wake, attracted, it would seem, by the fact that there
is a sick man lying on board, for the old and weather-beaten
quartermaster confidentially informs the clerical passenger
[Mr. Roe] that he will soon have a burial job on hand. The
quartermaster is always an authority on the subject of
sharks. 'Them there sharks,' he explains, 'have more sense
in them than most Christshuns. They know wot's wot, I
can tell yer; doctors ain't in it with sharks. I've heard
sharks larf when the doctor has told a sick man he was con-
valescent — larf, sir, outright, 'cos they knew what a blessed
mistake he was making. They are following up the scent of
a man on board now that's going to die, and they'll not leave
us until such times be as they gets him.'"

I am afraid that the "old and weather-beaten
quartermaster " was imposing on the credulity of the
passengers when he went so far in his sailor-like
love of "yarning" as to picture sharks laughing
outright with sinister irony ; but his narrative in the

THE STORK. 45

main, as it is reported by the biographer, gives a very
fair description of the popular superstition among
sea-going men. As a matter of fact, I think we may
more reasonably assume that sharks follow in the
wake of vessels for the same reason that all large
fish do, solely for the scraps of meat and other
leavings which are thrown overboard.

Very probably instances are on record when
sharks have been observed following vessels on
which a sailor or passenger has subsequently died ;
but such a coincidence in no way proves that they
have scented death, or seen the ' ' dread form of the
Angel of Death." Why is not the same faculty
extended to the porpoises which play around the
vessel's bows, or to the "wailing sea-birds" which
hover about the vessel's rigging?

GOOD OMENS.

"The signs are lucky all, and right.
There hath not been a voice, or flight,
Of ill presage." — Ben Jonson.

Happily every creature is not placed on the black
list of those whose melancholy mission is to fore-
tell calamities. There are, on the other hand, many
whose purpose is said to be exactly the reverse — to
augur good luck, peace, happiness; and curiously
enough most of these prognosticators are birds.
The Stork, that " emblem of true piety," is a bird

46 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

whose presence is regarded as an augury of good
fortune in almost all countries where it is known. In
Holland and Germany at the present day the in-
habitants give the birds every encouragement to
make their nests on the roofs of the houses, and
fortunate is the man supposed to be whose house the
storks choose for this purpose.

Longfellow, in an American song, "To the Stork,"
very beautifully illustrates this belief:

" Welcome, O Stork ! that dost wing
Thy flight from far away !
Thou hast brought us the signs of spring,
Thou hast made our sad hearts gay.

Descend, O Stork ! descend

Upon our roof to rest;
In our ash-tree, O my friend.

My darling, make thy nest."

In the " Golden Legend" the same poet represents
the bird as a direct gift from God. Speaking of the
good Prince Henry, Bertha asks :

" Did he give us the beautiful stork above
On the chimney-top, with its large round nest ? "

And Gottlieb replies :

" No, not the stork. By God in heaven,
As a blessing, the dear white stork was given."

The reverence for the stork dates back to very an-
cient times. The Egyptians paid it the Same reverence
as the sacred Ibis ; the Thessalonians were restricted

THE stork's devotion. 47

from doing the bird an injury ; the Romans regarded
it as a bird of good augury. A Greek law compelling
children to maintain their aged parents took its name
from the bird, and all the numerous legends which
have been woven round its name testify to its de^
votion, faithfulness, love, and, generally speaking, its
sterling character. Was it not into a stork that the
pitying gods transformed Antigone when, boastful
of her beautiful hair, the jealous Juno turned her
locks into writhing serpents?

As an example of the stork's devotion to its young
ones, we are told that on a fire occurring in the city
of Delft, the parent, after making strenuous efforts
to rescue them without success, permitted herself to
perish with them in the flames. The stork's faithful-
ness to its mate is brought out in a story that the
male bird, rather than desert his partner when she
was wounded at the time of migrating, spent the
winter months by her side tenderly providing for her
needs. Its filial devotion is said to be so great that
when the parent is too old to fly the young bird
carries her on his back, and supplies her with food :

" When age had seized and made his dam
Unfit for flight, the grateful young one takes
His mother on his back, provides her food,
Repaying thus her tender care of him
Ere he was fit to fly."

But here, I am afraid, we are straying into the
realms of fiction. While there is hardly room to

48 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

doubt that the devoted bird at Delft yielded up its
life in preference to deserting its young — an act of
maternal solicitude which would be equalled by many
a little bird in the hedgerows, — or that it watched
faithfully by the side of its wounded mate, we must
look with suspicion on a stork carrying its infirm
old parent about like a Kaffir with a piccaninny on
her hips.

Such stories as these have, no doubt, served to
strengthen the Eastern belief in the stork as a bird of
good augury ; but there are passages in the Armenian
song referred to above which seem to show that, like
the swallow, the bird is welcomed more particularly
as a harbinger of spring.

" Thou hast brought us the signs of spring "

is very suggestive of this idea, as are also two verses
descriptive of the change of weather which followed
the stork's return to a warmer climate :

" When thou away didst go,
Away from this tree of ours,
The withering winds did blow.
And dried up all the flowers.

Dark grew the brilliant sky.

Cloudy and dark and drear ;
They were breaking the snow on high.

And winter was drawing near."

" Swift-winged and pleasing harbinger of spring,''
a title given by a Yorkshire poet to the Swallow,

LUCKY SWALLOWS. 49

gives us a clue to the peculiar veneration in which
these birds are universally held. By the ancients
they were placed among those requiring special
honour, the Romans believing that the spirits of
departed children took up their abode in the bodies
of these graceful birds, and in this way came periodi-
cally to visit their old homes. But this pretty myth
only helps to strengthen the supposition that it is as
"a harbinger of spring" that the swallow obtains
its title of a bird of good augury, and this belief is
implanted deep in the hearts of even little children.
Dryden tells us that

" Swallows are unlucky birds to kill,"

and Pope that

"Children sacred held a Martin's nest;"

and any schoolboy, though perhaps he may not be
able to give a reason for his belief, will tell us that to
destroy a swallow's nest will bring "bad luck."
Among young people the ancient fable which tells us
why

" Progne makes on chimney-tops her moan.
And hovers o'er the palace once her own,"

can have no influence over their feelings; nor in
England is the swallow, as it is in Sweden,
associated in any way with the Crucifixion of our
Lord.

In addition to believing that bad luck will result

50 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

from killing- a swallow or destroying its nest, many
people believe that precisely the reverse will obtain
if swallows build under their eaves, and very great
care is taken to prevent the birds from being fright-
ened or molested. There is a passage in Hood
which seems to refer to this belief:

" But bid the sacred swallow haunt his eaves
To guard his roof from lightning and from thieves."

While touring in Turkey some years ago, I was
very much interested in a pair of swallows which
had the temerity to build a nest on a bracket inside
a coffee-house near Constantinople. The bracket,
which was not more than seven feet from the ground,
had apparently been placed on the wall for the birds'
special benefit, and they showed their appreciation
by treating the host and his customers as confidential
promoters of the scheme. The swallows left and
entered the apartment by means of the doorway,
which was also used by the customers,' and so little
did they fear "the unspeakable Turk," that they
frequently passed close to his face when they hap-
pened to meet him coming in or going out. The
presence of the birds seemed to give the proprietor
immense satisfaction, and I have no doubt he would
stoutly have prevented their receiving any molesta-
tion; but whether he considered them harbingers of
"good luck" I cannot say.

Yet while it is not every one who desires to have
swallows nesting on their buildings, chiefly in con-

THE ROBIN AND THE WREN. 51

sequence of the dirt which is made by the birds and
their young, there are very few people who would
wantonly break their nests or frighten them away.
' ' When they go they take your luck away with
them," is a common saying. Not more than a few
months ago I was told about a farmer who had
destroyed a number of swallows' nests on his house
and barns, ever since which time the swallows had
refused to colonise on his farm buildings, and he had
experienced a series of misfortunes.

Whether the original builders of a nest which has
been destroyed will return at another season to the
place of the depredation seems to be somewhat a
moot question. I have known of nests remaining
in a broken state for many summers after they have
been destroyed, the swallows apparently refusing,
through fear or vexation, to rebuild the old habita-
tions. That sometimes swallows will repair old
nests which have ruthlessly been damaged has been
amply proved, but it is very doubtful whether the
birds have been the same as those which built them
in the first instance.

While

" The martin and the swallow
Are God Almighty's bow and arrow,"

it is also said that

" The robin and the wren
Are God Almighty's cock and hen;"

and nothing but ill fortune would attend the

52 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

callous man who dared to do an injury to our
pugnacious little friend the Redbreast, and his tiny
wife Jenny Wren.

" Him that harries their nest,
Never shall his soul have rest,"

says a popular rhyme. Another tells us that

" If you go to catch a robin.
You will come back a-sobbing;"

or in similar words —

" The red on the breast of a robin that's sought,
Brings blood to the snarer by whom it is caught ;"

or still further —

" A robin in a cage
Sets all heaven in a rage."

Truly, a " robin in a cage " is a rare as well as an
unnatural and disagreeable sight. I shall not soon
forget the displeasing impression made upon my
own feelings, and upon those of many others,
on seeing a robin imprisoned in a pretty painted
cage in a side-show. The bird seemed altogether
out of place — a little martyr, a fluffy, pathetic appeal
to our tenderest natures. Yet, why so more than
any other bird " fastened and imprisoned behind
bars"? Can it be that the melancholy fate of the
"breast burned bird" told in the tales of our

THE CUCKOO. 53

childhood still linger with us and bring forth our
compassion ? If so, long may they linger and
create sympathies and tender feelings which in
these days are all too rare. Happily the pretty
redbreast, stained with the blood of our Redeemer
(so fables tell us), is yet to be seen in our crofts
and on our window-sills, and the appearance of the
pugnacious little visitor in our rooms is accepted
both as a sign of confidence in our goodwill and an
augury of good fortune.

The Cuckoo —

" Darling of the spring,"

as Wordsworth endearingly calls it, is another bird
whose name is synonymous with good luck, and
this very probably because, like the swallow and
the stork, its appearance is significant of spring's
sweet advent.

" Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing
'Cuckoo!' to welcome in the spring."

—John Lyly.

Whatever you may wish, folks say, when first you
hear the cuckoo's call, your wish will be gratified.
But a very ancient tradition insists that in order to
obtain good luck, especially in affairs of love, it
is necessary to hear the notes of the nightingale

54 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

first. To go back only to the days of Chaucer, we
learn —

" How lovers had a tokening,
And among hem it was a commune tale
That it were good to here the nightingale
Rather than the leud cuckow sing.''

And the poet tells how, half-asleep and half-awake —

" I hearde sing
The sorry bird, the leud cuckow.
And that was on a tree right fast by,
But who was than evill apaid but I ?
' Now God,' quod I, ' that died on the crois,
Yeve sorrow on thee, and on thy leud vois.
Full little joy have I now of thy cry.'

"And as I with the cuckow thus gan chide,
I heard in the next bush beside
A nightingale so lustely sing
That with her clere voice she made ring
Through all the greene wood wide.

(£ (

Ah, good nightingale,' quod I then,
' A little hast thou ben too long hen.
For here hath ben the leud cuckow,
And songen songs rather than hast thou,
I pray to God evill fire her bren.' "

Milton, in his " Ode to the Nightingale," referring
to the same superstition, writes:

" O nightingale, that on yonder blooming spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still:
Thou with fresh hopes the lover's heart dost fill,
While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May.

THE cuckoo's call. 55

The liquid notes that close the eyes of day.
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill,
Portend success in love; O if Jove's will
Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate
Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh."

Chaucer's reference to the cuckoo as a " leud bird,"
and Milton's condemnation of it as "a rude bird of
hate " arise, no doubt, from its association with un-
faithfulness in marriage. Probably its own singular
habit of leaving its eggs to be hatched by other birds
has been the origin of this association. Chaucer
represents the bird as cynical in the extreme in its
view of love and matrimony. When the nightingale
has so beautifully been singing of the virtues which
love engenders, the cuckoo sarcastically observes:

" Nightingale, thou speakest wonder faire,
But for all that is the sooth contraire.
For love is in young folke but rage,
And in old folke a great dotage,
Who most it useth, most shall enpaire."

The cry of the cuckoo is supposed to denote
mockery, and one of our old English words having
this significance is derived from the Latin word
cuculus-^a. cuckoo.

Shakespeare, in the song which closes Love's
Labour's Lost, uses the note of the cuckoo to convey
this meaning:

" When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver white,

56 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he.

Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear !"

Poor cuckoo ! What senseless havoc does man's
imagination make of Natural History ! Through the
construction of a stupid fable the cuckoo's "jolly
voice" becomes "leud," "hated," and " a word of
fear." Still, not so, I hope, to most of us. We
listen with a rejoicing sense of approaching summer,
with all its full verdure and warmth, as once again
the curious voice of the hidden bird rings out. And
among the poets, too, the bird is not wanting for
friendship. Spenser called it

" The met^y Cuckow, messenger of spring."

John Lyly describes it as "jolly"; Wordsworth
" delights" in the voice of the " blithe new-comer'';
and John Logan, the Scotch poet, in a gem of poetry
devoted to a eulogy of the bird, hails it as '■^beauteous
stranger of the grove." The poem is so delicate and
true to nature that I would like to reprint it here in
its entirety; three verses, however, must suffice:

" Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove !
Thou messenger of spring !
Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat.
And woods thy welcome sing.

A BLACK CAT FOR LUCK. 57

What time the daisy decks the green,

Thy certain voice we hear;
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,

Or mark the rolling year ?

Delightful visitant ! with thee

I hail the time of flowers,
And hear the sound of music sweet

From birds among the bowers/'

Similar to the expression of a wish on hearing the
cuckoo call is the belief that ' ' any wish will come
true " if made on seeing the first lamb of the season,
and there is no reservation in this case about seeing
or hearing any other animal first. This wholesale
kind of wishing, however, is hardly to be commended,
for though it may be lucky for the person expressing
the wish, it may be very unlucky for other people.
Then it is also said that a piebald or white horse is
an animal which brings good luck ; but some people
add that you must express your wish before you
think of its tail, a reservation which makes the act of
wishing an impossibility. I can well remember how,
when I was a schoolboy, it was our invariable custom
to expectorate over our little fingers on seeing a
white or piebald horse in order to secure good luck.
From the results up to date I must admit I have
not very abundant faith in this particular form of
superstition. Perhaps, however, I thought of their
tails !

A black Cat without a single white hair in its fur
is almost universally regarded as a "lucky animal,"

58 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

and quite a large number of people keep a black cat
for no other reason than to ensure prosperity. Woe
be to the foolish person who turns one of these sable
augurs from his door ; and woe, some people say, to
those from whose door the animal turns of its own
accord. Quite recently a lady told me with great
distress she had lost her cat. "I should not have
minded," she said, " but it was perfectly black."

The following instance of superstitious belief in
black cats appeared in the March (1903) issue of the
"Badminton Magazine," the subject of the remarks
being Prince Ranjitsinhji : —

" The Prince has a great superstition in black cats, and the
appearance of one at a shooting gathering serves to convince
him in advance of a fine morning plus a fine bag, and singu-
larly enough, it always turns out so. Twice in succession, he
claims, has the timely appearance of a black cat been instru-
mental in winning a county match for Sussex in addition to
other occasions."

A superstitious belief in cats, black or otherwise,
is of very great antiquity. Among the Egyptians the
animals were regarded with the utmost reverence,
and their mummified remains, a cargo of which was
imported to England not many years ago, are fre-
quently found in the same tombs as their worshippers.
In witchcraft and soothsaying cats have always
played no unimportant part, and wherever we see a
picture or description of a witch's hovel, there too we
shall certainly find portrayed her companion in dark-
ness, a black cat.

THE MONEV-SPIDER. 5g

" In a dirtie Haire-Iace
She leads on a brace
Of black-bore-cats to attend her
Who scratch at the Moone,
And threaten at noone
Of night from Heaven to render her.''

— i%mV^("TheHag").

One of the special ingredients in the filthy concoc-
tions with which these hags were supposed to work
their villainy was the brains of a black cat. Ben
Jonson, in his Masque of Queens, mentions this
ingredient in the song sung by the witches :

" I from the jaws of a gardenfer's bitch,
Did snatch these bones and then leaped the ditch:
Yet I went back to the house again,
Killed the black cat, and here's the brain."

A well-known superstition existing at the present
day is that a very minute species of Spider, commonly
known as the " Money-spider" or " Money-spinner,"
will, by creeping upon one's hand, bring good fortune
— for preference a legacy. Even timid ladies, who
would fall in a faint were any other creeping thing to
touch them, will allow the little " Money-spinner" to
crawl upon them with impunity, hoping that by per-
mitting it to do so some form of good luck will
ensue.

While writing upon the subject of spiders it will
not be out of place to mention the popular belief that
to kill a spider will certainly cause rain to fall. I
have met with this superstition in several parts of the

S

6o SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

country. In a small town in the West Riding of
Yorkshire not long ago, I saw a youngster intently
watching a spider making its way across a pavement,
or "causeway" as it is called in those parts. Pres-
ently, when the spider was about to reach a place of
safety, the boy raised his foot to crush the little
creature, but his nurse, who was quick enough to
prevent him, cried out with some alarm, "No, don't
kill it, or we shall have rain to-morrow."

DISTORTED NATURAL HISTORY.

" O Lord, how manifold are thy works ! in wisdom hast
thou made them all : the earth is full of thy riches.

So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping
innumerable, both small and great beasts.

The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever : the Lord
shall rejoice in his works."

— Psalm civ.

Apart from signs and omens, there is a form of
superstition which owes its origin largely to ignor-
ance in respect of the animal kingdom. This is a
surprising and pathetic fact, for it obviously shows
that few people are really interested in the marvellous
and beautiful creatures with which God has blessed
the earth. To me every creature He has made is an
object for wonder and admiration. Like Cowper,

" Cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime
In still-repeated circles, screaming loud,
The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl
That hails the rising moon, have charms for me."

And I may also add snakes, and toads, and slugs,
and blackbeetles. In each there is much that is
marvellous, that is beyond our limited comprehen-
sion, and not one atom of which can we design much

62 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

more create. But how very few there are who take so
much interest in the various "birds of the air and
beasts of the field " that they will look into books of
natural history to find out what kind of a world
they live in !

Much of this superstition is almost as amusing as
it is extravagant. We hear, for instance, that a cat
has nine lives ; that an earwig creeps into people's
ears and investigates their brains ; that a goatsucker
(or night-hawk, night-jar, etc.) sucks milk from goats
or cows ; that adders are deaf ; blind-worms are
blind ; snakes are slimy, can fascinate, and sting ;
toads are venomous; and so on, each of which is
equal to, if not surpassing, the ridiculed "annual"
of the sea-serpent. And it is chiefly because people
take so little interest in the wonders of natural
history, and accept in perfectly good faith the stupid
theories handed down from their great-grandmothers,
that these ancient fables are still credited. A cat, let
it be said, has only one life, even though it be a pretty
tough one ; an earwig has not the least desire to
creep into people's ears, and if it got there by
accident would be extremely uncomfortable ; adders
can hear as well as any other kind of snake ; blind-
worms have eyes and can use them in good style;
snakes are not slimy — they are dry, and they cannot,
in my opinion, fascinate, and assuredly they cannot
sting, they bite ; and a toad is not venomous. But,
in spite of books and lectures on natural history,
extravagant stories of the animal kingdom will still

THE CAT AS BAROMETER. 63

hold their ground, because it is so much easier to
take things for granted than to inquire for oneself.

Let us take, as an example of popular credulity,
the yarns which are told about that best known of all
four-footed creatures, our own domestic cat. She is
regarded almost universally as an unerring baro-
meter. If she sits with her back to the fire, she lets
you know that you must bring out your goloshes and
waterproof coats; if she washes over her ears, you
must expect sunshine; if she scampers about the
garden in a madcap fashion, be prepared for a high
wind. As a matter of fact, our feline friend turns her
back to the fire for the same reason that our grand-
mothers wear a shawl — to keep their backs warm;
and surely the cleanly creature can attend a little
more carefully to her toilet, or show an extra degree
of animal spirits, without indicating a change in the
state of the weather. But so implicitly do many
people believe in a cat's ability to act as a barometer
that they will actually consult its attitude and
practices before undertaking a journey. On this
subject Mr. Louis Wain, the well-known "cat artist"
and authority on all feline matters, was recently
interviewed by a Great Thoughts representative.
Asked as to whether his study of cats and their ways
led him to believe in the theory that they often act as
barometers, Mr. Wain vigorously replied, " No, I do
not think that because a cat washes her face it will
necessarily be a fine day on the morrow." And he
proceeded to explain the habit in a way that I had

64 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

not heard of previously — " I think they do that
merely to complete an electrical circuit, for by so
doing it generates heat, and therefore a pleasing
sensation in the fur."

A terrible charge which is brought against cats in
general is that of sucking breath from sleeping
infants after the manner of Ben Jonson's blood-
curdling hags. If this charge were true, or there
were even doubt about it, then every cat should
forthwith be unceremoniously turned out of doors,
and branded as an enemy of mankind. But happily
there is no truth in the allegation whatever. What
actually occurs is this : cats have sometimes been
known to lie on the breasts of sleeping babes in
order to obtain warmth, and in so doing have unin-
tentionally pressed the breath from the little sleepers'
bodies, thereby causing suiFocation.

A superstition which is equally untrue, but much
more poetical, is that a Toad carries in its head a
/ precious jewel, usually said to be a pearl. John
Bunyan was amongst those who, in days of old,
gave this remarkable fable their support. In his
apology for his great work, Tfie Pilgrim's Progress,
he wrote :

" If that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell,
And may be found too in an oyster-shel),
If things that promise nothing do contain
What better is than gold — who will disdain
That have an inkling of it there to look
That they may find it?"

JEWEL IN toad's head. 65

Shakespeare, in As You Like It, mentions the super-
stition in the following passage :

" Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous.
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."

It is supposed by many that in writing of the
" precious jewel," Shakespeare intended to suggest
the toad's clear, bright eye, which could indeed very
fittingly be described by that term. But it is very
evident that Bunyan had no such intention when he
referred to the pearl as being "found too in an
oyster-shell." It cannot be said of an oyster that it
has eyes which can be likened to jewels. I need
hardly say that if this old-time superstition were
true — that a toad carries in its head a precious jewel
— some American magnate would long ago have
made a corner in toads.

It is a common idea also that the toad is a
venomous creature, and apparently this superstition
has been prevalent wherever the toad has existed.
From the writings of our poets we can measure the
aversion with which this poor batrachian is generally
regarded. Beginning with Spenser, we find him
speaking of

" The grieslie tode stoole growne mought I se.
And loathed Paddocks [toads] lording on the same."

In the foregoing passage from Shakespeare we
have noticed that the dramatist describes the toad as

65 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

being "ugly and venomous," and in Richard III.
he again refers to it in the words :

" Never hung ioMX^x poison on a toad.
Out of my sight, thou dost infect mine eyesj"

and again in King Henry VI. (Part III.):

"Marked by the destinies to be avoided as venom
toads."

Pope, in one of his satires, describing the char-
acter of a certain "Sporus," mentions the toad's
alleged habit of spitting venom:

" At the ear of Eve, familiar toad.
Half froth, half venom spits himself abroad."

Chatterton also denounces the unfortunate crea-
ture:

" Ye toads, your venom in my footpath spread ; "

while Giflford, portraying the jealousy of Weston,
uses the toad as an example in a way which is very
hard on the reptile:

"Weston! who slunk from truth's imperious light.
Swells like a filthy toad with secret spite,
And, envying the fame he cannot hope.
Spits his black venom at the dust of Pope.
Reptile accursed ! "

Browning, among more modern poets, in his

VENOMOUS TOADS. 67

" Pied Piper," also regards the toad as an enemy of
mankind :

" Creatures that do people harm —
The mole and toad and newt and viper.''

Perhaps it is scarcely necessary to say that the
supposition that a toad is venomous is quite un-
warranted. No reptile, or batrachian, strictly speak-
ing, could be less harmful or more useful than our
little friend Bufo. It is true that when molested he
exudes from his skin a slimy, acrid substance, which
is nauseating to animals that venture to take hold
of him, though I have never heard of one being
poisoned thereby. And as this exudation is the timid
creature's sole means of defence, and as it prevents
him receiving more molestation than he already has
to put up with, we Can only admire the Providence
which bestowed it upon him. I have kept many
toads as pets, and have found them to be harmless
and interesting, and not wanting in intelligence.
They became so tame that they would feed from my
hands, and so soon as they knew they had nothing to
fear from being handled and examined in a way
which could not have been pleasant, they ceased to
exude their glandular secretion.

There is a story told of a drunken man who for a
wager, in a public-house, chewed a toad's head off
and subsequently became dangerously ill. The dirty
ruffian ! But this mad trick in no way proved that

68 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

the toad was "venomous." The acrid secretion in
the toad's skin would be quite sufficient to cause the
man's illness. Many another creature which is pro-
vided by a good and wise Providence with a peculiar
secretion for self-defence would have brought on the
same illness if treated in the same disgusting way ;
not a few beetles and flies could be named amongst
this number. The idea of a toad spitting venom is,
of course, ludicrous, though it is even to-day a very
common belief, especially among children.

It has been pointed out to me that the " venom "
of toads may have reference to the viscous secretion
on their tongues, by which they lay hold of the insects
and other " small fry" which form their diet. This
substance, it is said, when brought into contact with
a wound will cause serious illness, and has been
known even to result in death. There, however,
seems to be nothing in this contention. Not long
ago the newspapers told us that a scratch by a cat
had caused a man's death, and the bite of a dog, even
when the animal was in perfect health, has been
known to set up acute blood poisoning. I should
be very chary of letting the saliva of any kind of
animal come in contact with a cut or sore; but if
such happened by accident, and I were in con-
sequence to suffer from blood poisoning, I should
not denounce that animal as "venomous."

"It is strange," says the author of the famous
Natural History of Selborne, "that the matter with
regard to the venom of toads has not yet been

TOADS AS MEDICINE. 69

settled." This was in 1768. In the minds of
naturalists the question, I believe, is now entirely
settled, though Frank Buckland regarded the toad as
poisonous. But amongst the mass of people there is
still, and I am afraid always will be, a firm-rooted
opinion that the toad is a venomous creature, and it
is loathed and detested accordingly. Schoolboys —
pitiless in their treatment of things they dislike —
stone it and pelt it as they did ages ago, fearful of
going too near it lest it should spit its venom upon
them. Probably I stoned it myself when I was a
youngster — I hope not ! — for I believed it to be an
evil and vicious thing ; and poor, unoffending, useful
little creature, it seems to bear upon it a brand of
evil, not a precious jewel, and will be hated and per-
secuted for evermore.

In White's Selborne there is an interesting entry
with reference to the healing of cancer by the appli-
cation of a toad, though it does not appear that the
"cure" obtained a very widespread popularity.
"Several intelligent persons," says White, "both
gentry and clergy, do, I find, give a great deal of
credit to what is asserted in the papers, and I myself
dined with a clergyman who seemed to be persuaded
that what is related is matter of fact." But Mr.
White, rightly, was very sceptical as to the efficacy
of this horrible nostrum, and believed that the
woman who claimed to work the " cancer cures"
"finds it expedient to amuse the country with this
dark and mysterious relation."

70 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS,

General credence has been given to the theory
that toads are able to live for long ages in solid
blocks of stone without the possibility of nourish-
ment reaching them. In scientific minds this theory
for long enough found acceptance, and to-day there
are many well-informed people who still give it their
support. In order to put the popular belief — much
more popular then than now — to a thorough definite
test, Dr. Buckland, father of the well-known natural-
ist, deposited twenty-four toads in cells carved out
of stone, covered with glass for purposes of inspec-
tion. Twelve of the cells were twelve inches by five
inches, made in coarse oolitic limestone, and twelve,
six inches by five inches, in compact siliceous sand-
stone, the former being so porous as to be easily
permeable by water, and probably by air, but the
latter being very compact. These blocks of stone
containing the unfortunate prisoners, twelve of them
being large toads and twelve small, were placed in
Dr. Buckland's garden beneath three feet of earth on
November 26th, 1825. Within thirteen months of
this date all the toads in the sandstone and the small
toads in the limestone were dead, although the glass
in some instances had been cracked, and in one of
the cells "a large assemblage of minute insects"
was found. Before the end of the second year all
the large toads in the limestone were also dead.
Dr. Buckland also tried the experiment of placing
toads in holes cut in the trunk of an apple-tree,
with the result that at the end of a year "every

TOADS IMPRISONED IN ROCK. 7 1

one of the toads was dead, and their bodies were
decayed."

A few years ago, while excavations were being
made in the North of England, a living toad was
discovered which apparently must have been en-
tombed for many years in the solid rock. In order
that the circumstances might be scientifically in-
vestigated and reported upon, the toad was sent
to the Rev. Dr. Tristram, F.R.S., to whom I am
greatly indebted for a letter giving the features of
the report, which he published in the Press at the
conclusion of his investigations.

" It proved," he says, "that the animal could not have been
for very long where it was found. It was a female full of
spawn, and in the stomach were various insects, chiefly ear-
wigs and small beetles, and also bits of straw and a small
maggot, but no winged insects. It must have fallen down a
crevice, and unable to escape (probably having fallen when
very small) depended for food on such substances as acci-
dently fell into the cavity which imprisoned it. It had only
partially shed its skin, not having had room to throw it off,
and it still adhered to the fore part of the body and the head.
It may have been a year or two in the position in which it
was found, but it is impossible that it could have existed
there much longer. The most important piece of evidence,
the cavity itself, was never found."

This interesting statement, together with the
above-mentioned experiments, proves pretty con-
clusively that so-called imbedded or imprisoned
toads are by some means or other provided with
nourishment during their incarceration. But, as in

72 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

the foregoing case, and in all others that I have
heard or read of, the cavity in which the toad is said
to have been imprisoned, being either partially or
entirely missing, it is almost impossible to refute
conclusively the assertion that the toad has been
imprisoned for centuries, or to prove that nourish-
ment must have been supplied through some chink
or channel. As Dr. Buckland's experiment shows,
toads being sluggish creatures, are able, like snakes,
to live without any sort of food for several months ;
but the experiment also clearly shows that they can-
not live beyond this time entirely excluded from air
and food.

It is an outrage on one's reason to be asked to
believe that any creature can exist for century
upon century embedded in the solid rock hundreds
of feet below the surface of the earth. Still, the
ancient supposition has, even now, numerous
advocates. Only a few weeks ago I was supplied
with detailed information respecting the discovery
of a toad found in a limestone quarry in the County
of Durham. But in this case, as in all others of
a similar kind, only a portion of the cavity was
obtained, and no attempt was made to examine
the contents of the animal's stomach. Thus the
only two methods by which any practical decision
could be arrived at were wanting. Yet in this
instance we were asked to believe that the toad had
existed in its rocky prison without air and without
nourishment for, not only hundreds, but thousands

SHOWERS OF FROGS. 73

of years ; whereas there was no real kind of
evidence to show that it had been where it was
found for more than a few months. An argument
used in favour of this toad's entombment — and of
many others found under similar conditions — was
that it could not have fallen to so great a depth
without being killed or very much injured. Yet it is
quite possible (as is suggested by Dr. Tristram in
the case of the toad sent to him for examination)
that in an early stage of its existence it drifted or
was carried there, and had crept through a cranny
or fissure into the cavity from which it was unable to
find a way of returning to liberty. But for popular
imagination it is not always necessary that there
should even be a cavity. The very fact of finding a
toad in a mine or quarry is in itself, to many persons,
sufficient ground for the supposition that the animal
must have been entombed there for countless ages.
On the other hand, I think the assertion will com-
mend itself generally that there can be no actual
proof of the toad's imprisonment in the absence of
the whole or any part of the cavity in which the
creature is alleged to have been embedded.

While writing on the subject of toads, it will not,
I think, be out of place to refer to the popular belief
— I cannot call it a superstition — that during spring-
time myriads of small frogs fall from the clouds.
The appearance of these hosts of minute creatures
in our own country is so common that any person
residing near fields may see them for himself The

74 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

question is not one as to the creatures being there
(as if they were arrayed for another encounter with
the mice), but how they get there in such countless
numbers. The general impression is that they have
descended with a shower of rain, for it is usually
after a rainfall that they appear. I have known of
their appearing in such a dense mass that they have
darkened a road for a quarter of a mile, and passing
vehicles have killed them by thousands.

But while the sight of myriads of small frogs
is by no means uncommon, it is not often that
one is able to instance a personal experience of a
plague of large frogs. Such has, however, once, and
only once, fallen to our lot. It was in Stellenbosch,
Cape Colony, where this extraordinary visitation
took place, and from a description I gave of it In
the Dewsbury District News last year, the details
were as follow: —

How they arrived or whence they came was a mystery;
but that they had come, and come on some sort of business
of their own, was a living reality. It was about midnight
when they arrived. The camp was silent in sleep, save for
the nasal music of tired troopers or the neighing of horses in
the adjacent lines. The first notice I had of their arrival
was on being awakened by something cold alighting on my
face. As I raised my hand to find out what the clammy
object was, it quickly departed, and I was just about to turn
over for another sleep, thinking I had perhaps been mis-
taken, when one of the troopers cried out :

" Here, chuck it ! "

"What's up?" asked the man sleeping next to him, who
apparently had received a prod in the ribs.

A PLAGUE OF FROGS IN SOUTH AFRICA. 75

" Don't go working your arms about like a blooming
signaller," replied the other man gruffly.

" I never moved my arms," was the reply.

" Yes, you did ; you hit me on the face, and don't do it
again."

At this moment another voice chimed in:

" Don't act the goat when a man's asleep."

" Who's touching you ? " was the query which came in a
sleepy voice from the same part of the tent.

" You threw a lump of candle. I felt it hit me on the face,
and it's a daft joke to play after ' lights out.' "

" I swear I was asleep until you awoke me," was the reply.

Then there arose the sound of scuffling, and a voice in
some alarm cried out :

" Strike a light, some of you. There's some beastly reptile
in the tent. I felt it crawl across my face."

At once a candle was lighted, and a strange spectacle
met our eyes : the tent was alive with frogs. They were
squatting on the boxes, on the saddlery, on our rugs and
coverings. Frogs everywhere ! As we sprang from the
ground the little reptiles began to leap about wildly in their
excitement to escape, and boots and mess-tins and odds and
ends of accoutrements were soon flying in all directions.
Not for long enough did we get rid of our nocturnal visitors,
but where they went to we could not discover, as there was
no water near by. Their appearance and disappearance
always remained a mystery. Many times subsequently I
noticed that after a shower of rain each pool would be alive
with croaking frogs, and I have seen tadpoles swimming
about in a bowl outside a tent, though the bowl was empty
and without animal life a little while previously.

My nocturnal visit from this army of full-grown
frogs was more humorous than surprising, though
there certainly was an element of mystery in the
spasmodic way in which they appeared and dis-
appeared, and my inability to remember whether

6

76 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

their advent was signalised by one of those swift
deluges of rain which are characteristic of South
Africa makes the circumstances still more mys-
terious. But the presence of innumerable loud-
voiced frogs in pools quickly formed by heavy
showers of rain was of very common occurrence,
and my attention was more fixed on the harmonious
chorus they made — some snapping like castanets,
others tolling like bells — than how they congregated.
My own impression, now that I have thought more
of the matter, is that the frogs were scattered about
the Karroo previous to the downfalls, and assembled
in the pools as they were formed. My attention was
naturally attracted to the animals only when they
were gathered together, and even then I probably
should not have noticed them save for their vocal
performances.

The case of the tadpoles is, however, quite of a
different kind. Here we had, after a rainfall, the
appearance of numerous little creatures in a vessel
which previously stood empty. That they were
unable to struggle over the ground and leap into
the vessel was unquestionable; but it was also
unquestionable that they had got into the vessel,
and no one was sufficiently interested in them to
place them there. I could not do otherwise than
believe that they had descended with the rain, though
I did not, as I should have done, examine the ground
near by to ascertain whether or not other tadpoles
had fallen besides those in the tin. Here, then, is a

THE SALAMANDER. 77

mystery worth unravelling'. It is a well-authenticated
fact that volcanic dust is carried thousands of miles
from an eruption and suspended in the air for as long
as three or four months. Is it not possible for tad-
poles in their very early stage of existence to be
taken into the air and subsequently released and
brought to earth with a downfall of rain?

The preposterous story that Salamanders are able
to live in fire was at one time commonly accepted
as an ordinary fact of natural history, and seeing
that naturalists themselves were not certain whether
to give the reptiles credit for this remarkable power,
or throw it aside with many other stupid notions
which had been handed down from Aristotle and
Pliny, it was little wonder that unenlightened persons
accepted it with implicit faith. Fire was supposed
to be the natural element of salamanders, as natural
as water is to a fish.

" As if their wisdoms had conspir'd
The salamander should be burned,
Or like those sophists, that would drown a fish."

It was believed that they were engendered by
terrific heat just as chickens are hatched by the
warmth of the hen's body. But not only were the
creatures presumed to be impervious to heat and
actually brought to life in furnaces, they were also
credited, with the power of quenching flames by
merely being brought in contact with them.

78 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Quackery was even going to the extreme of
creating schemes by which salamanders might be
brought into the service of mankind as fire-engines.
And so devotedly did the common people cling to
these monstrous fables, upheld in their belief by the
credulity of early naturalists, that it was not until
repeated experiments had been made with the
unfortunate reptiles that the superstitions were
completely exposed, and folk settled down to
believe they had hitherto accepted the wildest
nonsense as "gospel truth." Still the ancient
belief is not altogether dead. The salamander is
yet to many people "the creature that lives in
flames," and articles of domestic utility such as
"salamander wool," a kind of asbestos, and "the
salamander," a poker-like article for stimulating
fires, help to keep the old superstition alive.

An experiment, such as I have alluded to for
testing the salamander's imperviousness to heat,
is vividly described in John Wesley's Survey of the
Wisdom of God in Creation, an exhaustive and
clever, though, of course, unreliable natural history,
contemporary with Goldsmith's. Mr. Wesley, in
writing of the salamander, says that there is no
ground for the belief that it is able to live in fire, yet
at the same time asserts that salamanders are to be
found "near furnaces where the heat is so great
that no other animal could endure it without being
destroyed in a few minutes." But the eminent
divine makes no attempt to give a reason for his

A SALAMANDER IN FLAMES. 79

assertion, nor does he give one instance to prove
it. He then goes on to describe an experiment
which was made by several interested gentlemen
to discover whether it was a fact that salamanders
could " really live in fire."

" Some charcoal," he says, "was kindled and the
animal laid upon the burning coals. Immediately
it emitted a black liquor which entirely quenched
them. They lighted more coals, and laid it upon
them. It quenched them a second time in the
same manner. But being presently laid on a fresh
firej it was in a short time burned to ashes."

Little wonder, poor creature ! From this descrip-
tion it would seem that Mr. Wesley had rejected
one ridiculous story to accept another equally stupid
and void of truth. It is quite probable that the
description is exaggerated beyond all likeness to
the actual experiment. At the same time, it is by
no means improbable that a salamander, or for
that matter a frog, a toad, or indeed any creature
having a glandular secretion in the skin, might
be able to endure an exceptional measure of heat
much in the same way as one is able to pick up
hot substances with the fingers by simply wetting
them.

The fear and disgust with which people regard all
kinds of creeping things, without respect to their
nature or usefulness, is exemplified by the remarkable
aversion that is shown to the harmless common

8o SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Newt. Needless to say, these little batrachians,
many of which I have found most interesting pets,
are incapable of inflicting the least injury, and hold a
very useful and necessary position in the animal
kingdom.

When Ceres wished to punish the impudent youth
who made merry over her consumption of barley
water she transformed him into a newt, so that he
might be regarded with aversion, but have " no
great power of doing injury." Still, harmless as the
newt is, I can well remember my feeling of terror
when, as a child, I passed near a green-covered
duck-pond, which, I was told, was full of newts, or
efts, that were "poisonous." I thought they would
jump out and sting me, and I ran past the pond as
quickly and as far from it as I possibly could. Yet
these people, whose ignorance had been the means
of creating this childish terror, were country-bred,
descendants of country stock, and had lived all their
lives within a stone's-throw of the duck-pond. The
fear of these harmless creatures is, however, of very
ancient date. We may gather this from a passage
in A Midsummer Nighfs Dream:

" Newts and blindworms do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy queen."

As also from two lines in the Faerie Queene, in
which Spenser writes of

" These marishes and myrie bogs.
In which the fearful! ewftes do build their bowres."

SWALLOWED NEWTS. 8l

And coming down to modern times, we find in a
quotation which I have already given from the " Pied
Piper of Hamelin " that the newt is mentioned among
" creatures that do people harm."

It will be noticed from Spenser's use of the word
"ewftes" how the modern word "newt" has
gradually evolved from the Anglo-Saxon "efete"
—an "efete," an "ewfte," an " ewt," "a newt."
In the same way we get the word "adder" — "a
neddre," "an eddre," "an adder."

It is within comparatively recent years that people
in country districts, when suffering from indigestion,
frequently attributed their abdominal pains to the
presence of a newt which they had swallowed in its
egg stage. Illness in cattle they sometimes put
down to the same reason, and extraordinary means
were adopted to get rid of the pest. Indeed, it is
quite open to question whether the supposed malady
was any worse than the prescription resorted to for
the working of " a cure." For instance, which may
be considered the worse of two evils — to give per-
manent board and lodgings to a newt in the " pit of
the stomach " or swallow a roasted mouse to get rid
of it? I think I would sooner have the newt, for
the newt would, after all, be merely imaginary,
whereas there would be no doubt whatever about
the mouse. It hardly need be said that such a reptile
as a newt could not live for more than a few minutes
in the human stomach. There have, however, been
cases where parasites several inches in length have

82 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

been brought up, and it is highly probable that these
have given rise to the old superstition about newts.

The supposition that Chameleons live on air is of
very great antiquity and almost universal. That it
dates back to the days of Moses seems almost
certain, for among the unclean creeping things
mentioned in the book of Leviticus is one which is
translated from a word meaning "to breathe," and
in the Revised Version is rendered " chameleon."

This reference to breathing leaves no room to
doubt that the ancient writer was conversant with
the common superstition of his day; and even at
the present time the antiquated superstition is im-
plicitly believed in. As one might expect, poets
have made free use of this pleasing fancy both for
illustration and ornament. Shakespeare, in Hamlet,
uses it in the former sense :

" King. How fares our cousin Hamlet ?
Hamlet. Excellent, i' faith: of the chameleon's dish: I eat
the air promise crammed: you cannot feed capons so."

Charles Churchill, in his humorous satire depict-
ing the stagnation which was to fall on Scotland,
writes :

" No living thing, whate'er its food, feasts there
But the chameleon who can feast on air."

Shelley, comparing the chameleon with the poet,
says:

THE CHAMELEON. 83

" Cameleons feed on light and air;
Poets' food is love and fame."

The reason why poets choose this light diet, he goes
on to explain, is because they dare not "stain"
their "heavenly mind" "with wealth or power,"
and, pressing the simile, he continues:

" If bright cameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind.
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.''

In the same poem Shelley also refers to the
chameleon's singular faculty of changing colour :

" Would they ever change their hue,
As the light cameleons do.
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day ?"

The idea here expressed is that the chameleon
changes its colour to suit the hue of its environment.
Elsewhere the same poet, still comparing a chameleon
with a lover, mentions the phenomenon in similar
terms :

" As a lover or cameleon
Grows like what it looks upon."

The same belief occurs in a poem on "The
Cameleon," by Matthew Prior ;

" As the cameleon who is known
To have no colours of his own;
But borrows from his neighbour's hue,
His white or black, his green or blue,"

84 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Unfortunately for poetic imagination, and, I may
add, for the point of a speech delivered recently by a
prominent statesman — that a certain member on the
other side was like a chameleon, able to alter his
colour to suit his surroundings — there is no truth in
the supposition. It is true that chameleons have the
faculty of changing their colour very highly developed,
but this change is now attributed to the peculiar
structure of their skin, influenced by their feelings
and moods. And need it be said that whatever be
the nature of a poet's food, chameleons require some-
thing a little more substantial than air for their
sustenance — a juicy fly, or a tiny luscious beetle is
more suited to their dietary.

Perhaps no superstition has been more used in
illustration than that of the Crocodile shedding tears,
and many will doubtless wonder how weeping has
become associated with such a vicious and dangerous
reptile as the crocodile. As we understand the term
now, "crocodile tears" mean hypocritical lamenta-
tions, and it is in this sense that the term is
commonly used as a simile. The schoolmaster who
tells a trembling youngster that the pain which he is
about to suffer under the strokes of a supple cane are
as nothing compared with the pain which the school-
master himself will suffer, may properly be described
as "crocodile tears." Or the term can accurately
be used in connection with the young heir who weeps

WEEPING CROCODILES. 85

at the funeral of a crabbed and cantankerous old
relative to whose fortune he is succeeding, while, at
the same time, he devoutly blesses Providence for
having removed the barrier.

It is in this sense that Dryden uses the simile in his
play, All for Love. Antony tells how "some few days
hence" he will be "contracted in his narrow urn,"
and Octavia, bearing the "cold ashes" in her
"widowed hand to Csesar,"

" Csesar will weep, the crocodile will weep,
To see his rival of the universe
Lie still and peaceful there."

Sir John Suckling, describing the falseness of a
lady, employs the simile :

" Hast thou marked the crocodiles weeping
Or the foxes sleeping ?
. . . Oh ! so false, so false is she !"

Tennyson in his pathetic poem, "The Dirge," de-
scribing the "ravings" of the world about one who
has finished the "long day's work" and turned to
rest, says :

" Crocodiles wept tears for thee ;
The woodbine and eglatere
Drip sweeter dews than traitor's tear.
Let them rave."

This idea of the weeping crocodile, which is now so
effectively used to describe humbug and hypocrisy, is
founded on an actual belief. In the Middle Ages,

86 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

travellers returned from foreign climes with the
astounding' information that crocodiles, when wishful
of luring human beings to destruction, beguiled them
with profuse lachrymation, and then consumed them
with the same manifestations of sympathy and regret.
Bacon definitely alludes to this belief when he says :

" It is the wisdom of crocodiles that shed tears when they
would devour."

And Shakespeare has in his mind the same wild
story when he makes Queen Margaret say:

" Henry, my lord, is cold in great affairs.
Too full of foolish pity, and Gloucester's show
Beguiles him as the mournful crocodile
With sorrow snares relenting passengers.''

This extraordinary fabrication, which bears on the
very face of it the imprint of a mere traveller's yarn,
was received by the credulous people of those days
with the utmost implicitness. In the same way they
accepted the absurd stories of " legless Birds of
Paradise" which "lived on morning dew" and
fragrant spices.

" Those golden birds that, in the spice-time drop
About the gardens, drunk with that sweet food
Whose scent hath lur'd them o'er the summer flood.
And those that under Araby's soft sun
Built their high nests of budding cinnamon."

And likewise they swallowed the equally stupid
yarn, similar to that of the crocodile, that Hyaenas

THE SNAIL WHICH MELTETH. 87

cry like children in order to lure sympathetic people
to destruction.

"All night, the lean hyaenas their sad case
Like starving infants wailed."

It is curious that another old-time error is
strengthened by Biblical reference — that a Snail
wears itself away by its own motion.

" As a snail which melteth," wrote the Psalmist, " let every
one of them pass away."

The supposition, it is perhaps hardly necessary to
emphasise, is quite inaccurate, but if we accept it
as a beautiful metaphor it admirably expresses the
Psalmist's meaning.

In a book of Scriptural Natural History, published
in 1835, I recently came across the following choice
morsel of information written in all seriousness upon
this subject: —

" This reptile [i.e., the snail] lodges in a winding shell and
marks out its path with slime. It, therefore, wastes itself
away by its own motion, every movement leaving part of its
moisture behind."

This singular quotation scarcely needs, I think,
any comment. Had the writer taken the least
trouble to verify his statement by actual observation
he would not have committed so glaring and stupid
a blunder. How different is the explanation of the

08 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Psalmist's metaphor, given by Dr. Tristram in his
clever and entertaining Natural History of the Bible:

" In order to prevent the evaporation of the moisture of
the body all these molluscs which have a thin or semi-
transparent shell secrete themselves in dry weather. . . .
But notwithstanding the care they take to secrete them-
selves, the heat often dries them- up, either by a long con-
tinued drought, or by the sun's rays penetrating to their
holes. Thus we find in all parts of the Holy Land myriads
of snail shells in fissures, still adhering by the calcareous
exudation round their orifice to the surface of the rock,
but the animal of which is utterly shrivelled and
wasted — ' melted away,' according to the expression of
the Psalmist."

And now we come to Snakes ! And when I enter
upon this part of my subject I am at an utter loss
where to begin and where to end, for there is no other
creature on the face of the earth of which so little
is known and of which so much nonsense is spoken
and written. Even the most educated people of the
present day ascribe to snakes, or "serpents," all
sorts of ridiculous powers and functions which the
reptiles have never possessed, and slander them in a
scurrilous way, that, even to snakes, is more than
unkind. Snakes are regarded almost, perhaps I may
say altogether, universally with the most intense
loathing and fear ; and it is no doubt on this account
that they have become the objects of more supersti-
tion than any other creature. This antipathy is due
in a very large measure, I have no doubt, to the

SNAKES. 89

curse pronounced upon the Serpent by the Creator
after the downfall of our first parents :

" Thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast
of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt
thou eat all the days of thy life.

" And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head,
and thou shalt bruise his heel."

And speaking of the last things which shall come to
pass, St. John, in his marvellous Revelation, de-
scribes the seizing and binding of "that old serpent
which is the Devil," an expression of the deepest
loathing and contempt.

When Christ uttered his condemnation of the
Pharisees his invective culminated in the words ' ' Ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers," knowing precisely
what the simile would convey to his hearers. But
this hatred of the "serpent tribe" does not appear
to have been displayed before the Downfall. We are
told that "the serpent was more subtle than any
beast of the field," but by this we are not to under-
stand that it was more wicked, simply wiser — "Be
ye, therefore, wise as serpents."

It is evident that Eve was on the most comfortable
terms with the reptile which was to wreak so much
havoc in the blessedness of Paradise, and she seemed
to think it nothing out of the ordinary when the
Serpent sidled up to make some confidential refer-
ences to the Tree of Knowledge. Still this is not to

go SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

be wondered at, if we accept as literal the description
of the reptile sketched by Milton in his Paradise
Lost. In the first place the reptile was not
" creepy" or " crawly." He did not, so Milton tells
us, approach her

" With indented wave
Prone on the ground as since."

Quite otherwise, he came towards her "on his rear,"
by which we may suppose that his progression was
" on end " or upright like an ordinary mortal, whose
attitude for the moment he was, no doubt, wishful to
imitate. But, beyond this, there is another reason
why Milton's Serpent struck no terror into the heart
of our first mother. Anticipating in Eve's character,
it would seem, that love of colour and ornament
which has been the predominant feature of all her
daughters whatever their station, Satan arrayed
himself to suit her taste and fancy. It was not
as a dull-coloured, snaky, objectionable reptile he
approached her. Satan knew his quarry. On he
came,

" His head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes ;
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape,
And lovely; never since of serpent kind
Lovelier."

Poor Eve ! But even if we suppose that the blind

FEAR OF SNAKES. 9 1

poet had been taxing his imagination for so vivid and
fine a description of Eve's betrayer, there is no doubt
that from the Genesis account of the Temptation
we may understand that Eve did not regard
the reptile with aversion. This fearlessness had,
however, changed to terror in the days of Pharaoh
the persecutor of Israel. When the Lord told Moses
to cast his rod upon the ground, and, as a conse-
quence of his action, it became a living serpent,
" Moses fled from before it," and man has fled from
before it ever since.

A few weeks ago, a singular example of this
detestation and fear of snakes was brought to light
at an inquest in the East End of London on the body
of a poor bedridden youth, who was said to have
died from fright on seeing a snake by his bedside.
The evidence of the mother and other witnesses very
clearly showed how exaggerated statements respect-
ing snakes have become popular belief. Not only
did they describe the reptile as being very much
larger than it actually was, but they also gave lurid
descriptions of its flashing eyes and glittering fangs,
and the picture was made more realistic, if inaccurate,
by a neighbour explaining how she fed the angry
creature with pieces of bread to keep it quiet ! Unr
fortunately for the veracity of the witnesses, the
naturalist from whom the reptile had escaped was
able to prove that it was only a harmless English
grass-snake not more than two feet long, and there-
fore quite devoid of poisonous " fangs."

7

92 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Arising- out of this fear of the reptiles, and a marked
inaccurate knowledge of their nature and habits,
serpents were, in days of old, objects of great
veneration, and the most absurd traditions were
created in respect of their size and power. Only one
or two of these need be mentioned to give an idea of
the terrible nature of the reptiles which ancient
imagination conjured up. At the Siege of Troy, two
monstrous serpents came up out of the sea and killed
Laocoon, the high priest of Apollo, and his two sons.
According to Diodorus, the Sicilian, an Egyptian
snake, measuring thirty cubits long, was captured
and brought to Alexandria. While Regulus was
with his army near Carthage, a terrible serpent
stopped their advancement on the banks of the river
Begrada, and made a meal of a large number of his
soldiers before the reptile was put to death by a stone
from a catapult.

Whenever a writer, be he ancient or modern, sits
down to describe a snake, or "serpent" as he prefers
to call the reptile, he seems to delight in letting his
imagination have free scope in depicting a creature
terrible in aspect, impossible in architectural con-
struction, and omnivorous in tastes. Thus Virgil
(Dryden's rendering) describes a serpent which crept
from Anchises' tomb :

" His huge bulk on sev'n high volumes rolVd;
Blue was his breadth of back, but streak'd with scaly

gold :
Thus riding on his curls, he seem'd to pass

A POET'S SNAKES. 93

A rolling fire along, and singe the grass.
More various colours through his body run
Than Iris when her bow imbibes the sun.
Betwixt the rising altars, and around,
The sacred monster shot along the ground ;
With harmless play amidst the bowls he pass'd.
And with his lolling tongue assay'd his taste :
Thus fed with holy food the wondrous guest
Within the hollow tomb retir'd to rest."

And undertaking the description of a snake (the
one referred to above was a serpent) the same poet
writes :

" So shines, renew'd in youth, the crested snake.
Who slept the winter in a thorny brake.
And, casting off his slough when spring returns.
Now looks aloft, and with new glory burns,
Restor'd with pois'nous herbs : his ardent sides
Reflect the sun : and, rais'd on spires, he rides
High o'er the grass ; hissing, he rolls along.
And brandishes by fits his forky tongue."

Thus we are given to understand that whilst both
serpent and snake roll and ride, the serpent also has
the faculty of shooting. And, whereas the serpent
who lived in Anchises' tomb laps his food out of
"bowls" with his "lolling tongue" like a tame
mouser, the snake restores his strength, after a
winter fast, with "poisonous herbs." Truly the
reptiles of ancient times must have been wondrous
creatures.

But now let us turn to a modern poet, and see
if we can come any nearer to an accurate descrip-^

94 SUPERSTITIONS ABOXTT ANIMALS.

tion of a serpent. This is what the serpents in
Longfellow's "Hiawatha" look like:

"Soon he reached the fiery serpents,
The Kenabeek, the great serpents,
Lying huge upon the water,
Sparkling, rippling in the water,
With their blazing crests uplifted.
Breathing fiery fogs and vapours.
So that none could pass beyond them."

True, this is a description of those legendary
reptiles which guarded the habitation of Megisso-
gwon, the magician; but in the words "fiery
serpents " we have a distinct reference to the " fiery
flying serpents" of the Old Testament ("fiery" on
account of their bite, and "flying" because of their
swift method of striking) ; and the power of breath-
ing fiery fogs and vapours (surely a paradox) is
nothing more than was attributed to the basilisk
or cockatrice, which is alleged to have killed vegeta-
tion by breathing upon it. Nor indeed is the
description more exaggerated than that given by
many another author who might be quoted, nor
does it exceed anything which a person of ordinary
intelligence would write to-day if you were to put
pen and paper before him and ask him to give you
a faithful description of a common English adden

Snakes always have been, and, I am afraid, always
will be, credited with all kinds of wonderful
attributes which they do not possess nor ever have
possessed, and people seem always ready to believe

SNAKES SUPPOSED TO BE SLIMY. g5

anything about them which is nasty or inaccurate.
For instance, people who have never had the
pleasure of handling the reptiles insist that they are
"slimy." This is a very great mistake, and is as
much a slander as if the snakes were to contend
that such people never washed themselves. I have
handled numerous snakes, but have not yet found
one that was "slimy." Sometimes they have been
cold; but then snakes, being cold-blooded creatures,
take their temperature from surrounding objects, so
that they cannot be blamed for having a cold skin
if they are kept in cold places. The error into
which writers have fallen in regard to "slippery"
or "slimy" snakes is perhaps not to be wondered
at considering the natural prejudice against the
reptiles, which would preclude a closer acquaintance
than was absolutely necessary.

Virgil writes of the '■'■slippery serpent."

William Seeker says that

" Snails leave their slime behind them as well as serpents}'

Chatterton asserts that

" The sli'my serpent swelters in its course."

Byron goes to the extreme of explaining the actual
colour of the "slime":

" If like a snake she steal within your walls
Till the black slime betray her as she crawls.''

Shakespeare is even more explicit. In the play of

g6 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Antony and Cleopatra, after the Queen has died
from the bite of an asp, one of Caesar's guards,
who has made an examination of the apartment,
exclaims :

"This is an aspic's trail, and these fig leaves
Have slime upon them such as the aspic leaves
Upon the caves of Nile."

However thrilling and dramatic this finding of the
" aspic's trail" may be, as matter of fact it is an utter
violation of the truth. The snake which Cleopatra
"applied to her breast," after having "pursued
conclusions infinite of easy ways to die," was very
probably the horned cerastes, a deadly reptile which,
far from seeking the cool seclusion of the "caves of
Nile," or any other caves, finds supreme enjoyment
in basking in the hottest places it can discover.

"So grateful to the heat is this snake," says
Bruce, the celebrated traveller, ' ' that though the
sun was burning hot all day, when we made a fire at
night by digging a hole and burning wood to char-
coal in it for dressing our victuals, it was seldom
that we had fewer than half-a-dozen of these vipers,
which burned themselves to death by approaching
the embers."

The slime on the fig-leaves was assuredly not the
trade mark of this dry-skinned reptile, nor was it the
" slime " of any other kind of snake which Cleopatra
could obtain. Shakespeare is very true to nature
where he has had the opportunity of studying his

HOW SNAKES KILL. 97

subject, but he merely expresses the comrrion and
erroneous ideas of his day when he conies to deal
with snakes.

There is also a general, but false, impression that
snakes " sting." How often we may hear the remark
when a snake thrusts out its delicate forked tongue :
"Look! It is putting out its j^2«i^.'" The supposi-
tion evidently is that this organ is charged with
poison, and inflicts a wound by penetration. This is
true of the " sting " of a wasp, as I have many times
experienced when in my early days I hunted for
wasps' nests in the hedgerows round Devonshire
orchards; but it is not true of a snake. A snake
bites ! It uses its teeth, or fangs, much after the
manner of a dog — that is, by snapping, and waits for
the poison to take effect before consuming its prey.
This, of course, is true only of the venomous species.
A constrictor grasps its prey with its teeth, throws
its relentless coils round the unfortunate creature,
and then swallows it. Other snakes which are
neither venomous nor constricting lay hold of their
prey with their needle-like teeth, and, never letting
go for an instant, work it head-foremost down their
, gullets. Those few varieties which feed solely upon
birds' eggs are provided with spinous processes stand-
ing out from the vertebrae, by which the shell of the ^g^
is fractured in its passage, and the contents are thus
safely received for digestion and assimilation. But
no snake stings ! So true is this that I would permit
the most venomous snake to lick my hand till further

gS SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

orders, presuming of course that it would not be in a
position to make use of its teeth.

The impression that a snake uses its tongue to
inflict a wound is apparently as ancient as the reptile
itself. In the book of Job we find the tongue
spoken of as an instrument of death :

" The viper's tongue shall slay him."

This, however, in the Bible, is an isolated instance.
Most of the sacred writers, apparently well acquainted
with the habits of the reptiles they describe, speak of
their hite:

"Behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you,
which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the
Lord." — -Jeremiah.

" And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and
they bit the people; and much people of Israel died." —
Numbers.

"At the last it biteth X^t, a serpent, and stingeth like an
adder." — Proverbs.

"And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid
them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and
fastened on his hand." — The Acts.

But among the Ancients the tongue was believed
to be the instrument by which death was caused.
Ovid mentions it in this respect:

" Behold ! a snake lurking in the grass, with its barbed
sting wounds her foot as she flies, and leaves its venom in
-her body."

Virgil frequently represents the snake as "brand-

THE TONGUE AS A " STING. 99

ishing her tongue," or "brandishing his forky
tongue," as if that were the weapon by which it
injected its poison, and he uses the word "sting"
in association with the same organ :

" Beware the secret snake that shoots a sting."

Once he goes so far as to describe two serpents
which were both venomous and constricting, and in
addition makes them use their teeth as if for the
purpose of mastication :

" And first around the tender boys they wind.
Then with their sharpen'd fangs their limbs and bodies

grind.
The wretched father running to their aid
With pious haste, but vain, they next invade;
Twice round his waist their winding volumes roU'd,
And twice about his gasping throat they fold.
The pious priest thus doubly chok'd — their crests divide,
And tow'ring o'er his head in triumph ride.
With both his hands he labours at the knots;
His holy fillets the blue venom blots."

But then these were no ordinary serpents : they
lived in the sea !

Chaucer, in his quaint " Legende of Cleopatras,"
attributes the death of the queen to the stings
of serpents. His description of the careful way
Cleopatra arranges her death should be read to be
appreciated. Having embalmed the body of Antony
and fastened it in a shrine, she digs a pit alongside.

100 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

fills it with serpents, and, naked, steps among them,
and is siung to death :

" And next the shrine a pit than doth she grave,
And all the serpentes that she might have.
She put them in that grave.

And with that word, naked, with full good herte,
Among the serpents in the pit she start,
And there she chose to have her burying.
Anone the neders [snakes] gonne her for to sting,
And she her death receiveth with good chere,
For love of Antony that was her so dere.''

Shakespeare, on the other hand, curiously enough
makes this tragic death almost his solitary instance
of the bite of a snake :

" Come thou mortal wretch,
With thy sharp ieefh this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie : poor venomous fool.
Be angry, and despatch."

In most other instances he refers directly or in-
directly to the tongue as the organ by which poison
is introduced. Here are some:

"What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting ihee twice?"

—"Merchant of Venice."

" Snakes, in my heart-blood warm'd, that sting my heart ! "

—" King Richard 11."

" I fear me you but warm the starved snake
Who cherish'd in your breasts, will sting your hearts."

—"King Henry VI." (Part II.).

FASCINATION. lOI

" An adder did it; for with doubler tongue
Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung."

— "A Midsummer Nights Dream.''

" Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder
Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch
Throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies."

— " King Richard II."

"Were there a serpent seen, with forked tongue,
That slyly glided towards your majesty,
It were but necessary you were waked,
Lest, being suffer'd in that harmful slumber
The mortal worm might make the sleep eternal."

—"King Henry VI." (Part II.).

Spenser uses the word " stings " when speaking of
the asp's power of inflicting a death-wound :

" Like the stings of aspes that kill with smart.''

And Dryden obviously supposes that a snake has a
sting in its tongue when he writes that

" A serpent shoots his sting.''

Another faculty which snakes are said to possess
is that of "fascination." Here I am treading on
somewhat treacherous ground, for while it is a
simple matter to prove that snakes are not slimy,
and cannot sting, it would be no easy task to prove
that they have not the power to fascinate.

In the entertaining Scriptural Natural History
from which I have previously quoted, there is an
interesting reference to this subject which very

102 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

clearly illustrates the opinion which was commonly
held at that period :

" The black snake is found in America, but it is a harm-
less creature. ... Its eyes appear like fire for brightness,
by means of which it is said to be capable of fascinating
birds who tremble on the wing, and are at length so com-
pletely frightened as to fall into the serpent's mouth."

A terrible sort of creature to be creeping about.
John Wesley, however, writing at an earlier date,
gives a much better idea of the fascination theory:

" It is very remarkable," he says, and I cordially agree
with him, "that he [the rattlesnake] frequently stays under
a tree, on which a bird or squirrel is hopping about, with his
mouth wide open. And the event constantly is the creature
in a while drops into it."

"A swallow," he goes on to say, "pursuing his prey in the
air, if he casts his eye on a Snake beneath him, waiting with
his mouth wide open, alters his course, and flutters over him
in the utmost consternation, till sinking gradually lower and
lower he at last drops into his mouth."

Another story which the eminent divine tells about
the rattlesnake is even still more extraordinary, and
shows that this snake has lost none of that primeval
subtlety which distinguished these reptiles from the
rest of their fellows :

"The rattlesnake, being less nimble than others, would
find difficuhy in getting its prey were it not for the singular
provision made by the rattle in his tail. When he sees a
squirrel or bird on a tree he gets to the bottom and shakes
this instrument. The creature, looking down, sees the

FASCINATION EXPLAINED. IO3

terrible eye of the snake bent full upon ,it. It trembles,
and never attempts to escape, but keeps its eye upon the
destroyer, till tired with hopping from bough to bough, it
falls down and is devoured."

Numerous other writers, amongst whom I will
mention only Byron and another, tell similar stories
respecting this singular faculty of "fascination," or
use it for the purpose of illustration.

" And like the bird whose pinions quake.
But cannot fly the gazing snake,
Will others quail beneath his look.
Nor 'scape the glance they scarce can brook."

— " The Giaour!'

The other reference is to a tale told of an Indian
missionary. Seated on his verandah one day he
saw a bird fluttering and trembling near by as if
in great terror. He then noticed that the little
creature was being transfixed by the gaze of a
snake which glided towards it. Rising from his
seat he stepped between the snake and its quarry,
and thus breaking the spell liberated the bird, which
flew happily away.

What explanation can we give for the common
belief in this power of fascination ? Such stories
as those I have mentioned bear unmistakably the
imprint of exaggeration, but they serve to show
how entirely and credulously educated people have
accepted glaring errors respecting the power of
serpents. And to-day this faculty of fascination

104 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

is as innoceiitly believed in as it was a century or
more ago. Such a common belief must have had
some reasonable origin. The "sliminess" of serpents
probably originated in their silent, stealthy progres-
sion, marvellous and mystical, so it seems, in their
total want of limbs. The "sting," doubtless, may
be traced to the continuous flickering of the forked
tongue, which, even when the reptile's mouth is
shut, continues its movement. And in some similar
way, most probably, the common idea of fascination
arose.

We may at once dismiss the statement that birds
or squirrels tumble headlong into serpents' yawning
mouths, unable to resist their seductive eyes. The
idea is altogether too grotesque; but it is possible
that, like many other flagrant errors, it had its origin
in a matter of fact. Probably the inventive person
who set this fable going saw "a bird or squirrel"
struggling on the earth a few feet distant from a
snake as if the poor creature were held spellbound,
and then saw the snake seize it and swallow it. In
this case the animal had already been bitten by the
reptile, which merely was waiting for death to ensue,
well knowing that its prey had no chance of escape.

Another theory of fascination, and one which
seems to be most reasonable, is that the reptiles' prey
are stricken with abject, numbing terror.

" The sight of a venomous snake," says Figuier, though
why necessarily venomous he does not say, "sometimes
renders its victims immovable, incapable of flight, and, as it

SNAKE-CHARMING. 105

were, paralysed, in which helpless condition they are seized
without opposing the slightest resistance. M. Dumeril,
while pursuing experiments in the Museum of Natural
History demonstrative of the sudden and mortal action of
the bite of a viper on a little bird, saw a goldfinch which he
held in his hands die suddenly merely at the sight of one."

I remember some years ago a porter at a London
station attempting to cross the railway-line just as
an express came thundering into sight not a hundred
yards distant. There was time for the man to cross
to a place of safety, or get back again to the platform
he had left, but he stood rooted, so it seemed,
between the lines, staring with horror-stricken eyes
at the approaching express, and in a moment was cut
to fragments. Could it be said of this man that he
was "fascinated"?

Another "snake story" is that before consuming
their prey snakes carefully lick them all over, so that,
being well lubricated, they will slip down the snakes'
gullets more easily. Needless to say this habit is
quite imaginary. There is scarcely enough moisture
on a snake's tongue to cover a beetle. The idea has
arisen from the snakes' habit of investigating their
food with their tongues before they swallow it.

While on the subject of snakes I cannot do other-
wise than say a few words about "snake-charming,"
though I must acknowledge, at the outset, that the
subject is one on which I find it difficult to express
any definite opinion. I have met with more than one
gentleman who has declared that he has seen cobras

I06 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

"charmed" by Indian natives, and has been quite
satisfied with the genuineness of the performance.
Others have declared that the reptiles employed
by the charmers were invariably deprived of their
fangs, had their lips stitched together, or in some
other way prevented from striking. In the written
statements of eye-witnesses the same difference of
opinion may be noted. A Government official in
Egypt, who was also a naturalist, discovered some
years ago that a so-called horned cerastes, with which
the chief snake-charmer was supposed to be doing
some marvellous feats, was nothing more dangerous
than a common non-poisonous variety upon which
artificial horns had been fixed. And it is pretty
certain that the pythons with which most travelling
charmers entertain the public are kept at such
a low temperature as to be wanting of sufficient
vitality to constrict. On the other hand. Dr.
Thomson, the author of the celebrated work on
the Holy Land, declares that he has seen many
serpent-charmers who do really exercise some
extraordinary power over snakes. The snake-
charmer, he says, is often required to perform his
feats in the full light of day, surrounded by
spectators, yet his success is always complete. Dr.
Tristram bears out this statement also from personal
experience.

" The charmers," he remarks, " are not impostors ; for
though they may sometimes remove their fangs, it is a. well-

THE DEAF ADDER. IO7

attested fact that they generally allow them to remain, and
they will operate on the animals when just caught as
willingly as on individuals which have long been in their
possession ; but they are very reluctant to make experiments
on any other species than the cobra.''

The practice of snake-charming is of very great
antiquity, and is mentioned by the Psalmist :

"They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;
Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charm-
ing never so wisely."

By-the-bye, what sort of an animal is this cele-
brated Deaf Adder? In all my investigations into
Natural History I have not yet met with a specimen,
and if there is one reptile more than another I have
a great desire to meet it is this wonderful adder
which cannot be charmed. Shakespeare, it would
seem, believed in the existence of the reptile, or, at
any rate, he thought it a capital specimen for pur-
poses of illustration :

" For pleasure and revenge
Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice
Of any true decision." — " Troilus and Cressida."

" What ! Art thou like the adder waxen deaf.?"

—''King Henry VJ."

Many country people of the present day are foolish

enough to believe that the harmless, timid blind

worm, or slowworm, is the cunning creature of

which the Psalmist wrote ; and my good friend the

8

I08 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

naturalist who flourished early in last century can
actually describe the creature for us. Hear him ! —

" It will lay one ear close to the ground and cover the
other ear with its tail to prevent itself from hearing the sound
of the music.''

The intelligent animal ! No wonder it cannot be
tamed.

Now, what is the simple truth of the matter ? We
have it in a nutshell. Unimaginative people persist
in reading Holy Scripture as if every word were a
plain matter of fact. They strip it of every vestige
of its beautiful warmth of colouring and expressive
allegory, and puzzle themselves with self-created
difficulties which have existence only in their own
dull comprehension. The Psalmist never meant it
to be understood that such a creature as a "deaf
adder" had a real existence. Such a rendering of
the text utterly spoils his simile. He was describing
the nature of wicked people, and wished to con-
vey the significant truth that just as some snakes
cannot be charmed, so the wicked will not obey the
injunctions of God. That is simple enough. The
same meaning is contained in one of our own well-
known proverbs: "There are none so deaf as those
who will not hear."

In another verse the Psalmist writes: "Their
poison is like the poison of a serpent." Are we
then also to believe that wicked people go about
with bags of poison in their cheeks ? If we accept

THE SLOWWORM. lOQ

one figure literally we must deal with the other
in the same way. As we have seen from the
sacred writers' frequent references to the "bite" of
serpents, while so many modern writers mention the
words "sting" and "tongue," the natural history
of the Bible is very true. We cannot improve upon
it; though, as we shall notice in the last division of
my subject, translators have tried to, by introducing
animals which have had no real existence.

Another reptile which crawls abroad under a mis-
nomer is the Blindworm, or Slowworm — a poor, frail,
nervous creature, which ignorance tells us is deadly
venomous. Shakespeare calls it " the eyeless
venom'd worm," and mentions one of the ingredients
of the witches' cauldron as being "a blindworm's
sting." Herrick also believes it to be dangerous:

" No will-o'-th'-wispe mis-light thee ;
Nor snake or slow-worme bite thee."

Scott gives it the character of being slimy and
slow :

" There the slow blindworm left his slime
On the fleet limbs that mocked at time."

Here, in these few quotations, we have the common
erroneous ideas respecting this frail little reptile. It
is popularly supposed to be venomous, eyeless, slow,
and slimy, and what is even worse, by country people
it is believed to be one of those very creatures which
stopped their ears and would not listen to the voice

no SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

of the charmers. But how utterly unwarranted are
these impressions. Not only has a blindworm eyes,
but it also uses them with such effect that the
little creature vanishes like a flash before you can
even get a glimpse of it; a rustle of moss, and it
has gone. Thus it is neither a ilind worm nor a
slow worm. Nor is it venomous ; far otherwise.
Its tiny teeth are scarcely able to make an impression
on one's bare skin, and so nervous is it that when
handled it becomes rigid with terror, and can easily
be snapped in pieces — hence its name Anguis fragilis.
As for being "slimy," all nasty creatures are
popularly supposed to be " slimy" ! This, then, is
the "eyeless venom'd worm," the little creature to
whom the fairies sang:

" Newts and blindworms do no wrong.
Come not near our fairy queen " —

a timid, useful reptile which any one might handle
without the least repugnance. The reason why it
has been misunderstood and misnamed is because its
real position in the animal kingdom has not been
appreciated. The blindworm is not a worm, or
snake, at all. It is, strictly speaking, a lizard; but
its limijs having become obsolete, its outward
appearanpe in many respects resembles that of a true
snake. There is one feature, however, which dis-
tinguishes it at once. Like other members of the
lizard family, the blindworm has eyelids. In this
respect it differs from the true snakes, which,-

SOME SNAKE STORIES. Ill

Strangely enough, "go about the world with their
eyes open," for the very simple reason that they
cannot shut them. In consequence of this peculiarity,
when blind worms have been found hibernating in the
company of snakes, their closed eyes have formed a
striking contrast against the wide-open eyes of the
other reptiles, and given them the reputation of being
blind.

There are numerous other strange superstitions
about snakes in general which show how little their
real nature is understood. One of these yarns is
that, however much they may be injured, they cannot
die until the sun goes down. That this is untrue I
have proved by killing them in the forenoon and
carrying them home in my pockets. The most
probable explanation of this stupid belief is that
snakes possess so much vitality that unless the back-
bone is actually broken they will sometimes remain
slowly dying until darkness has set in. In the
morning they will, of course, be found to have died,
giving the impression that, as the superstition has it,
" they were waiting for the sun to set."

Equally strange and untrue, it is scarcely necessary
to say, is the assertion that if a snake be cut in
pieces, no matter how far the bits are separated, they
will rejoin, and the snake will live on happily as if
nothing had happened. Nor is it less stupid to
believe, as many country people do, that if you go to
sleep in the open a snake will creep down your
throat. What with crows, and earwigs, and snakes,

112 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

tramps must find sleeping in hedgerows very in-
convenient. Shakespeare refers to this superstition
in As You Like It:

" Under an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age,
And high top bald with dry antiquity,
A wretched ragged man, o'ergrown with hair,
Lay sleeping on his back : about his neck
A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself,
Who with her head nimble in threats approach'd
The opening of his mouth."

Of the extreme virulency of snake poison many
wonderful stories are told, and if we accept one in
every hundred as being fairly accurate we shall not
be unduly misled. Here is a sample. An American
farmer, while working in his fields in the heat of a
summer noonday, was attacked by a huge rattlesnake,
which endeavoured to fix its fangs in the farmer's leg.
To repulse the attack, the farmer began to lay about
him with the rake, and the snake, seeing that a bite
of the leg was out of the question, seized the rake
with its fangs and severely bit it. "When, lo ! in a
moment," explained the American farmer, "the wood
of the rake swelled to an enormous size !" This is
an American story, and is given in evidence of
what a rattlesnake can do when it seriously sets to
work.

But it is left to an Englishman to give the most
effective illustration of the terrible nature of a rattle-
snake's venom. If we are at all dubious about the
truth of the American snake story, what shall we say

VIPER S MATERNAL INSTINCT. 113

of the following' yarn given with all seriousness in
A Survey of the Wonders of God in Creation: —

" Of how extremely penetrating a nature is their poison ?
A man provoking one of them to bite the edge of his broad
axe, the colour of the steel part presently changed: and at
the first stroke he made with it in his work, the discoloured
part broke out leaving a gap in the axe."

How thankful Engflish farmers should be that there
are no rattlesnakes in England !

The much debated question as to whether a viper
gives refuge to her progeny down her own throat
when danger threatens them is, I believe, still await-
ing definite settlement. Much has been said on
behalf of the supposition by people who affirm they
have seen a viper in the act of concealing her young
in this extraordinary manner. But the only means
of solving the problem — capturing a viper with the
young inside her — has not yet, so far as I have been
able to ascertain, been carried out. Under these cir-
cumstances, it would be manifestly unfair to write of
this alleged curiosity of nature as a mere superstition.

By this time, I think, my readers will have become
tired of reading about snakes, a subject which, I
know, has a fascination for only a very few people.
Let us therefore turn to other superstitions which
will make pleasanter reading for the majority.

A very extraordinary supposition, and one which it
is difficult to treat seriously, is that the Swallow,

" the ?wift- winged and pleasing harbinger of spring,"

114 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

passes away the cold months of winter at the bottom

of a pond or river. Yet this was at one time no
isolated opinion. , Pepys was not the only one who
believed that

" Swallows are pften brought up in nets out of the mudd
from under water, hanging together to some twigg or other
dead in ropesj and brought to the fire will come to life."

Dr. Johnson held the same opinion as the dear old
gossiper, though he does not go quite so far as to
say that the birds were dead.

"Swallows," he says, "certainly sleep all winter. A
number of them conglobulate together by flying round and
round and then, all in a heap, throw themselves under water
and lie in the bed of a river."

It is not easy to understand how so strange and un-
natural a belief became common. The most probable
reason is that swallows, when chasing their natural
food, — gnats, flies, and kindred insects, — approach
so near to the surface of rivers and ponds as to
" skim" the water now and again. Their disappear-
ance at the period of migration, added to the
foregoing habit, would be sufficient to give rise to
the belief that, in order to escape the wintry blasts
and frosts, they dived beneath the water and lay dor-
mant in the mud.

The supposition that swallows spend the winter
months in England in a state of torpor, instead of
seeking warmer climes, was at one time generally
accepted as a matter of fact.

TORPIDITY OF SWALLOWS. II5

Gilbert White, while declaring that he had never
heard an account of alleged torpidity "worth attend-
ing to," supports the theory that many swallows
remain during the winter months in "holes and
caverns."

" I am more and more induced to believe," he writes,
"that many of the swallow kind do not depart from this
island, but lay themselves up in holes and caverns; and do,
insect-like and bat-like, come forth at mild times, and then
retire again to their latebrae."

He, however, gives some very interesting examples
of the popular superstition of his day.

" A clergyman of an inquisitive turn," he writes, " assures
me that when he was a great boy some workmen, in pulling
down the battlements of a church tower early in the spring,
found two or three swifts {Hirundines apodes) among the
rubbish, which were at first appearance dead, but on being
carried to the fire revived. He told me that out of his great
care to preserve them he put them in a paper bag, and hung
them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated.

" Another intelligent person has informed me that while
he was a schoolboy at Brighthelttistone in Sussex [the early
name of Brighton] a great fragment of the chalk cliff fell
down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many people
found swallows among the rubbish."

Mr. White then goes on to say:

" But on my questioning him whether he saw any of those
birds himself, to my no small disappointment, he answered
me in the negative; but that others assured him they did."

How like many other strange stories that get

Il6 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

abroad ! — he had not seen the swallows, but he knew
others who had.

Several of our poets have preserved for us in verse
the hibernation of our feathered visitors.

Thomas Carew, as early as the dawn of the seven-
teenth century, writing on the " Approach of Spring,"
calls the swallow "dead ":

" But the warm sun thaws the benumb'd earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow."

Yet the same poet seems well aware that swallows
are annual visitants :

" Like swallows, when your summer's done.
They'll fly and seek some warmer sun."

Cowper writes very much after the same manner:

"The swallows in their torpid state
Compose their useless wing.''

But also says :

" She comes in the spring, all the summer stays.
And, dreading the cold, still follows the sun."

Thomson, halting between two opinions, gives the
birds the alternative of seeking " warmer climes " or
retiring to "their wintry slumbers," where they

" In clusters clung, beneath the mould'ring bank,
And where, unpierc'd by frost, the cavern sweats."

Dryden seems in a similar predicament. He tells
us how the swallow, knowing "by instinct or pro-

A COMMON OPINION. II7

phecy " that winter was approaching, summoned her
family to the summit of a steeple, where they held a
"common council," and decided on flight. Next
day, therefore, says the poet,

" All to the general rendezvous repair.
They try their fluttering wings, and thrust themselves in

air:
But whether upward to the moon they go.
Or dream the winter out in caves below.
Or hawk at flies elsewhere, concerns us not to know."

Yet he adds :

" Southwards, you may be sure, they bent their flight."

In another part of the same poem Dryden tells us
how a martin and his " race," battered by " rattling
hailstones, mixed with snow and rain," looked about
for a place to spend the winter months in, and

" Took shelter in a hollow tree;''

from which, however, they were soon hustled by a
" sturdy clown " and " all the rabble of the town,"

" because the laws provide
No martin there in winter shall abide."

Of course the whole poem is a satire, but these
extracts show that at the time it was written, the
time also when Pepys accepted the yarn about
swallows sleeping under water, the common opinion
of the people was that the swallow tribe passed away
the winter months in a state of torpor.

Il8 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

In this country we have no legends about the
swallow, but in Sweden it is a bird of some import-
ance, on account of its supposed association with the
death of our Lord. There is a legend about it in
that country very similar to those of our own pet
bird, Robin Redbreast, both of which I shall give in
the proper place. In his poem, "The Swallow,"
Leland tells us how:

" When Jesus hung upon the Cross,
The birdsj.'tis said, bewailed the loss
Of Him who first to mortals taught,
Guiding with love the life of all.
And heeding e'en the sparrows' fall.
But, as old Swedish legends say,
Of all the birds upon that day.
The swallow felt the deepest grief.
And longed to give her Lord relief,
And chirped when any near would come,
' Hugswala swala swala honomP
Meaning, as they who tell it deem,
Oh cool, oh cool and comfort Him."

In one of Moore's "Odes of Anacreon"we find
the two lines:

" And Progna, hapless, frantic maid.
Is now a swallow in the shade."

And turning to Dryden's translation of Virgil's
"Pastorals," we meet with the swallow under the
same name: I

" While Progne makes on chimney-tops her moan.
And hovers o'er the palace once her own."

THE STORY OF PHILOMELA. II9

Both these quotations have reference to the same
ancient fable, a fable which probably has been more
alluded to by our poets than any other.

Progne and Philomela were two sisters, daughters
of Pandion, King of Athens. Progne was married to
Tereus, King of Thrace, for services he had rendered
to Pandion. Philomela, who was unmarried, lived
with her father. Yearning for the society of her
sister, Progne entreats her husband to go to Pandion
and ask him to permit Philomela to visit her, even if
only for a little while, and Tereus sets sail on his
mission. While he is urging his wife's request with
King Pandion, Philomela enters richly arrayedy but
her personal beauty is even far richer than her
apparel. Tereus is overwhelmed by her charms, and
adds his own entreaties to those of his wife's.
Philomela also pleads to be allowed to go to her
sister, and King Pandion, overcome by their impor-
tunity, consents. Tereus and Philomela then set sail
for Thrace, but soon the evil intentions of Tereus
become known to the unfortunate woman. His
wicked passion gains the mastery over his honour,
and thrusting his sister-in-law into a castle in a
lonely wood he takes advantage of her helplessness.
Then, fearful of her betraying his villainy, he tears
out her tongue, and returning to Progne tells her
with feigned grief that Philomela is dead. But
guarded from flight and deprived of the power of
speech, Philomela is not without means of making
her terrible condition known to her sister. She

120 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

works the whole story of Tereus's unfaithfulness and
her own melancholy state into a design in cloth and
sends it by an attendant to Progne. Progne reads
this fearful message as if it were written in words,
rushes frenzied to Philomela's prison, and concealing
her sister's face under the foliage of Bacchus as if
celebrating his festival, brings her to Tereus's own
house. There Progne, pitying the poor woman's
overwhelming sorrow, embraces her, but loathing
her husband for the crime he has committed, thinks
out a scheme of revenge. Shall she burn his palace
down and cast him in the flames, or cut out his
tongue, as he has cut out her sister's, or shall she
stab him to death? While she is thus enraged and
thirsting for revenge, Itys, her son, comes into the
room. She sees in his face a likeness to his father,
and this decides her upon what course she will
pursue. While the Uttle fellow's arms are put
endearingly about her neck, she drags him to another
part of the palace, and, uplifting her sword, strikes
him dead. Nor is this enough for revenge : Philomela
takes up the sword and cuts his throat, and together
the two women mangle his body and put him into a
cauldron of boiling water. Then, gloating over her
scheme, Progne makes the body into a dish and
places it before her husband. Tereus, blind to the
nature of the horrible meal, partakes of it, and calls
for his little son Itys, that he may also join in the
feasting. Then Progne's triumph is complete. She
tells her horror-stricken husband that the boy for

WHY THE NIGHTINGALE IS SAD. 121

whom he is asking is the very food that he is eating.
And yet, scarcely understanding, he calls again for
Itys; but Philomela, her hair disordered and the
marks of the murder upon her, springing forth,
throws the head of the boy upon him, and with a loud
cry Tereus springs from the table and rushes on
the women. With his drawn sword he pursues them
into the grounds of the castle, but the gods come to
their assistance. While she is making for the woods
Philomela is transformed into a nightingale; and
Progne, taking refuge beneath the roofs of the build-
ings, becomes a swallow, upon whose breast even
to-day the red stains of her murdered son appear.
Tereus is changed into a crested bird which some
versions of the legend say is a hoopoe, others a
lapwing :

" The Thracian king, lamenting sore,
Turned to a lapwing, doeth them uprayde."

It is from this gruesome fable that the Nightin-
gale is so often called by our poets Philomela or
Philomel, and probably the melancholy fate of the
king's daughter, whose name the bird bears, is as
much responsible for its atmosphere of loneliness
and gloom as are its plaintive notes and midnight
melody. To mention all the instances in which the
nightingale is called by the name of Philomela or
Philomel would mean the extension of these pages
to an inordinate length. Quite a few must suffice,
and these will, at the same time, help to show how

122 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

the above fable has been influential in associating the
bird with grief: —

" Hence with the nightingale will I take part,
The blessed byrd, that spends her time of sleepe
In songs and plaintive please the more t'augment
The memory of hys misdeede that bred her woe."

— Spenser.

" Come, Philomel, that sing'st of ravishment.
Make thy sad grave in my dishevelled hair:
As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment,
So I at each sad strain will strain a tear.
And with deep groans the diapason bear;
For burden-wise I'll hum on Tarquin still.
While thou on Tereus descant'st better still."

— Shakespeare {"Lucrece").

" Sad Philomel, in bowery shades unseen.
To vernal airs attunes her varied shades."

—Pop {"Odyssey").

"Ah ! why, all abandoned to darkness and woe.
Why, lone Philomela, that languishing fall?"

— Beattie,

"And Philomell her song with tears doth steepe."— 5^«««>-.

"King Pandion, he is dead;
All thy friends are lapp'd in lead;
All thy fellow-birds do sing.
Careless of thy sorrowing."

— Richard Barnfield,

"And now and then sweet Philomel would wail."— 7%o»mo«.

"And lonely Philomel still waking s\ags."—MaMew Green,

" 'Less Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest saddest plight." — Milton.

IN LOVE WITH THE ROSE. 123

" The gentle bird who sings of pity best." — Charlotte Smith.

" When I departed am, ring thou my knell,
Thou pitiful and pretty Philomel." — Herrick.

How charming is the Eastern fable that the
nightingale is "in love " with the rose ! Picture the
sweet little singer in the darkness pouring out its
melody to its blushing lady-love from the depths
of its tender love-sick heart ! This is a favourite
theme of the poet Moore :

" The young rose which I gave thee, so dewy and bright.
Was the flow'ret most dear to the sweet bird of night.
Who oft by the moonlight o'er her blushes hath hung,
And thrill'd every leaf with the wild lay he sung.
Oh take thou this young rose, and let her life be
Prolong'd by the breath she will borrow from thee:
For while o'er her bosom thy sweet notes shall trill,
She'll think the sweet night-bird is courting her still."

— " The Young Rose."

" Though rich the spot
With every flow'r this earth has got.

What is it to the nightingale,
If there his darling rose is not ? "

— " The Light of the Harem."

" And yet, in all that flowery maze

Through which my life has lov'd to tread,
When I have heard the sweetest lays
From lips of dearest lustre shed;

When I have felt the warbled word

From beauty's mouth of perfume sighing.

Sweet as music's hallow'd bird
Upon a rose's bosom lying."

— " Poem to Miss Bickford."

9

124 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

"There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the day long;
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream,
To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.

That bower and its music I never forget.
But oft when alone in the bloom of the year,

I think — is the nightingale singing there yet ?
Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer ? "

—'■' Lalla RooW

Byron, too, sings of the fable :

" For there — the Rose o'er crag or vale,
Sultana of the Nightingale,
The maid for whom his melody,
His thousand songs are heard on high.
Blooms blushing to her lover's tale;
His queen, the garden queen his rose
Unbent by winds, unchill'd by snows.
Far from the winters of the west.
By every breeze and season blest,
Returns the sweets by nature given
In softest incense back to heaven."

— " The Giaour^'

" The childish thought was scarcely breathed
Before the rose was pluck'd and wreathed;
The next fond moment saw her seat
Her fairy form at Selim's feet:
' This rose to calm thy brother's cares
A message from the Bulbul [nightingale] bears;
It says to-night it will prolong
For Selim's ear his sweetest song.'"

— " The Bride o/Abydos."

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in her translation
of a Turkish love poem, writes:

THE LOVELORN NIGHTINGALE. 125

" The nightingale now wanders in the vines:
Her passion is to seek roses."

Mrs. Browning, in "A Lay of the Early Rose,"
represents the rose as saying :

" Ten nightingales shall flee
Their woods for love of me, —
Singing sadly all the suntide,
Never waiting for the moontide."

Probably it is this poetic fable which has given to
the nightingale the character of being "lovelorn,"
or it may be derived solely from the plaintiveness
of its melody. Whichever it may be, the bird is
"in love."

" Where the lovelorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well."

—Milton.

" To dear Saint Valentine, no thrush
Sings livelier from a spring-tide bush :
No nightingale her lovelorn tune
More sweetly warbles to the moon." — Scott.

Shelley, with a touch of realism in his poetry,
correctly refers to the enamoured songster as the
male bird, and describes him pouring out his song
to his listening mate. This poet, Byron, and
Moore, are among the very few who write of the
bird as "he"; nearly all others, probably thinking
of poor Philomela, make the songster the female

126 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

bird. Love, however, is still the nightingale's
theme.

'"Tis that enamoured nightingale
Who gives me the reply;
He ever tells the same soft tale
Of passion and of constancy
To his mate, who rapt and fond
Listening sits, a bough heyoa±"—Shelky.

" Hark ! that's the nightingale,
Telling the self-same tale

Her song told when this ancient earth was young:
So echoes answered when her song was sung
In the first wooded vale." — Christina G. Rossetti.

To make "her" song more pitiful, the bird is
represented as perching with its breast pressed
against a thorn:

" Never nightingale so singeth —
Oh, she leans on thorny tree.
And her poet soul she flingeth
Over pain to victory." — E. B. Browning.

" Everything did banish moan.
Save the nightingale alone:
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefuUest ditty.
That to hear it was great pity." — Barnfield.

" These nightingales warble the most sweetly.
When they set their breasts against the thorns."

— William Seeker.

" There, as sad Philomel, alike forlorn,
Sings to the night from her accustomed thorn."

— Dr. Darwin.

THE nightingale's CONTEST. 127

" No one to soothe me as I sleep
Save Philomel on yonder thorn."

— W.J.Mickle.

" And whiles against a thorn thou bear'st thy part,
To keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched I,
To imitate thee well, against my heart
Will fix a sharp knife to affright mine eye."

— Shakespeare.

Still in the melancholy vein ! There is a charming
but pathetic fable which is worthy of being inserted
here, telling how a nightingale and a shepherd con-
tested for supremacy in the richness and variety of
song, and how, as the shepherd struck luxurious
chords of music from his strings, the sweet bird
replied with richer song, until the young musician,
breaking forth into "a full-mouth'd diapason," the
nightingale essayed "all her sweet powers" to
imitate the deep sound, and failing, fell exhausted
upon the shepherd's lute and died.

A fine description of this musical contest was
written by Richard Crawshaw in the middle of the
seventeenth century from the Latin of Strada, and
the fable is mentioned at some length about the same
period by John Ford, the dramatist, in the Loveri
Melancholy, and by several other writers of a later
date, Moore and Cowper among the rest. It is not
possible or necessary to quote here more than a frag-
ment of Crawshaw's grand poem of a hundred and
seventy-five lines, only a few dealing with the
pathetic finish of the contest must suffice :

128 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

" At length (after so long, so loud a strife
Of all the strings, still -breathing the best life
Of blest variety, attending on
His fingers' fairest revolution,
In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fall)
A fuU-mouth'd diapason swallows all.
This done, he lists what she would say to this i
And she, although her breath's late exercise
Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat,
Yet summons all her sweet powers for a note.
Alas 1 in vain 1 for while (sweet soul) she tries
To measure all those wild diversities
Of chatt'ring strings, by the small size of one
Poor simple voice, raised in a natural tone;
She fails, and failing grieves, and grieving dies :
She dies, and leaves her life the victor's prize.
Falling upon his lute : oh fit to have
(That lived so sweetly) dead, so sweet a grave.''

John Ford's description, given in dialogue, is
neither so full nor so rich as Crawshaw's, but he has
embodied the pathos of the scene, and has given us
the phrase :

" A nightingale. Nature's best skill'd musician,"

which choicely expresses an almost universal opinion.
The following is an extract from the Lovers'
Melancholy. Menaphon is describing to Amethus
the contest he has seen in a grove at Thessaly :

" The young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird
Whom art had never taught clefs, moods, or notes,
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study
Had busied many hours to perfect practice :

THE BIRD IS HEART-BROKEN. I29

To end the controversy, in a rapture
Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,
So many voluntaries, and so quick.
That there was curiosity and cunning,
Concord in discord, lines of differing method
Meeting in one full centre of delight.

The bird, ordain'd to be
Music's first martyr, strove to imitate
These several sounds: which, when her warbling throat
Fail'd in, for grief, down dropp'd she on his lute,
And brake her heart ! "

Moore's reference to the fable is contained in a
few lines describing Zelica's sad melody when she
sings to the obligate of her lute :

"And when she sung to her lute's touching strain
'Twas like the notes, half ecstasy, half pain,
The bulbul utters, ere her soul depart,
When, vanquish'd by some minstrel's powerful art.
She dies upon the lute whose sweetness broke her heart."

Cowper deals with the fable in a poem of four
verses, which he calls " Strada's Nightingale":

"The shepherd touch'd his reed; sweet Philomel
Essay'd, and oft essay'd to catch the strain,
And treasuring, as on her ear they fell,
The numbers, echo'd note for note again.

The peevish youth, who ne'er had found before

A rival of his skill, indignant heard.
And soon (for various was his tuneful store)

In loftier tones defied the simple bird.

130 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

She dared the task, and rising as he rose

With all the force that passion gives inspired,

Return'd the sound awhile, but in the close
Exhausted fell, and at his feet expired.

Thus strength, not skill prevail'd. O fatal strife.
By thee, poor songstress, playfully begun ;

And, O sad victory, which cost thy life.
And he may wish that he had never won."

Is it anything more than a mere coincidence that
one of the notes of the nightingale is " tereu," while
the name of the king who dealt so wickedly with poor
Philomela in the fable was Tereus ? Is it not quite
probable that the name of the king was suggested by
the note of the bird ? Richard Barnfield seems to
suggest this in one of his sonnets, from which I have
previously quoted :

" 'Fie, fie, fie,' now would she cry;
' Tereu, tereu/' by-and-by ;
That to hear her so complain.
Scarce I could from tears refrain.''

And later in the same sonnet he mentions the name
of King Pandion, the father of Philomela, who being
dead cannot pity her.

John Lyly, the dramatist, also mentions this note
in the bird's song as if it had something to do with
" her woes'':

" What bird so sings, yet so does wail .'
O, 'tis the ravish'd nightingale.
Jug, jug, jug, ]M%— tereu— she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rises."

THE PELICAN. I3I

As we have noticed when giving the first two
quotations of the nightingale, the bird is supposed to
be singing of Tereus, who, as Spenser puts it, " bred
her woe"; and Lord Thurlow is another poet who
uses the name in the same connection :

" When with the jacinth

Coy fountains are tressed ;
And for the mournful bird

Greenwoods are dressed.
That did for Tereus pine ;
Then shall our songs be thine,
To whom our hearts incline :

May, be thou blessed !"

A very poetic, but quite erroneous, supposition is
that a Pelican feeds her young with blood which she
draws from her own breast.

Keats tells us that

" Life's self is nourished by its proper pith.
And we are nurtured like a pelican brood."

Byron goes so far as to give a picture of
the pelican destroying her own life to feed her
nestlings :

" It is as if the desert bird
Whose beak unlocks her bosom's stream
To still her famished nestlings' scream,
Nor mourns a life to them transferr'd,
Should rend her rash devoted breast,
And find them flown her empty nest."

Moore even more definitely declares:

132 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

" No, thy chains as they rankle, thy blood as it runs.
But make thee more painfully dear to thy sons,
Whose hearts, like the young of the desert-bird's nest,
Drink love in each life-drop that flows from thy breast."

So perfect a picture of maternal love and solicitude
is this poetic fable, that one is truly sorry to deny
that it has any foundation in truth. The horribly
plain and unromantic foundation of the belief is that
the pelican, when feeding her voracious young,
presses her bill against her breast to disgorge the
fish contained in her capacious pouch. The fact of
the tip of the bird's bill being red has been quite
enough to create the touching story that the pelican
gives of her own life's blood to nourish her tender
offspring.

The story that Swans sing a sweet song " tinged
with pathos" before they die is of very ancient
origin. Ovid was familiar with the fable, and makes
use of it to describe poor Canens' lamentation for
her woodpecker husband :

"Six nights and as many returning lights of the sun
beheld her, destitute of sleep and of food, going over hills
and valleys, wherever chance led her. Tiber, last of all,
beheld her worn out with weeping, and wandering, and
reposing her body on his cold banks. There, with tears, she
poured forth words attuned, lamenting, in a low voice, her
very woes, as when the swan, now about to die, sings his own
funeral dirge. At last, melting with grief, even to her thin
marrow, she pined away, and by degrees vanished into light

SWAN S DEATH-SONG. 133

And in the same translation (Riley's) the poet also
writes:

" The white swan, as he lies on the wet grass when the
Fates summon him, sings at the fords of Maender.''

The theme has been a favourite one with the poets:

" I will play the song and die in music.''

—Shakespeare (" Othello").

" And now this pale swan in her watery nest
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending."

. — Shakespeare {" Lucrece").

" Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end.
Fading in music."

— Shakespeare {"Merchant of Venice^).

" And over the pond are sailing
Two swans all white as snow;
Sweet voices mysteriously wailing
Pierce through me as onward they go.

They sail along, and a ringing

Sweet melody rises on high,
And when the swans begin singing

They presently must die." — Heine.

" There swan-like let me sing and die." — Byron.

" A dying swan of Pindus sings
In mildly mournful strains."

— Robert Montgomery.

" Like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume and takes the flood
With swarthy webs."

— Tennyson (" The Passing of Arthur^').

134 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

"With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dyipg swan,
And loudly did lament."

—Tennyson (" The Dying Swan").

" Swans sing before they die: 'twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing."

— Coleridge.

Many other poets have also made similar references
to the same fable, and from Whittier's " Swan Song
of Parson Avery," in which the poet says that

" The soul of Father Avery went singing to his rest,"

we may gather that this old idea is one of several
that have found their way across the Atlantic, others
being the British legend of the Robin and the
custom of " Telling the Bees."

There is no more beautiful or poetic story than how
the Crossbill derived its name. The legend can best
be told in Longfellow's sympathetic poem:

" On the cross the dying Saviour

Heavenward lifts His eyelids calm,

Feels, but scarcely feels, a trembling

In His pierced and bleeding palm.

And by all the world forsaken,

Sees He how with zealous care
At the ruthless nails of iron

A little bird is striving there.

Stained with blood and never tiring

With its beak it doth not cease.
From the cross 'twould free the Saviour,

Its Creator's Son release.

PEACOCKS HATE GOLD. I35

And the Saviour speaks in mildness:

' Blest be thou of all the good !
Bear, as token of this moment,

Marks of blood and holy rood !'

And that bird is called the crossbill;

Covered all with blood so clear.
In the groves of pine it singeth

Songs, like legends, strange to hear."

A fable of a different kind, yet not far behind the
legend of the crossbill in beauty and poetic feeling,
is that of the Peacock's hatred of gold. So intense is
its dislike of this much prized metal that it will not
alight on ground where it may be found. Major
Campbell writes of this fable in an interesting and
neatly worded poem:

" The peacock with its plumage rare
Is a holy bird and wise;
For he knows that gold is an evil thing.
From which foul thoughts and fancies spring,
To blind our mortal eyes;
He knows It is the seed of sin
Whose fruit may ripen the soul within;
For (if legends tell true) he will not tread
On the earth of the track that covers its bed."

Why the peacock, of aH birds, should be singled
out to assume the r61e of a mammon-hater we are
not told, nor is it easy to discover. From his gaudy
plumage and proud demeanour, one would hardly
suppose that he had so strong an antipathy to gold
or ornament of any sort.

136 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

A very quaint and weird superstition, which was
common in the days when sprites and pixies were
supposed to hold midnight revels, and, for good or
ill, pay visits to mortals in whom they were in-
terested, was that at the first crow of the Cock at
early morn the spirits which had been at liberty since
midnight, goblins, pixies, fairies, and all immortals,
betook themselves to their own abodes.

" Now it's the time of night

That the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide."

There are many references to this old superstition
in our literature, quite the best of which is in the
opening scene of Hamlet, where, on the castle plat-
form, we find Bernardo, Horatio, and Marcellus
discussing the subject after the precipitate disappear-
ance of the melancholy ghost of Hamlet's murdered
father.

^'■Bernardo. It was about to speak when the cock crew.

Horatio. And then it started, like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
The cock, that is trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill sounding throat
Awake the god of day: and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine: and the truth herein
This present object made probation.

Marcellus. It faded on the crowing of the cock."

This barn-door signal for the return of spirits and

THE cock's first CROW. I37

fairies to their own quarters is mentioned by Milton
in his poem "L' Allegro." In this instance the
immortal concerned is a "goblin," and the poet
introduces the quaint custom of leaving a bowl of
milk for the goblin to drink as a reward for his
midnight labours. We read:

"How the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn,
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength;
And crop-full out of doors he flings
Ere the first cock his matin rings."

David Mallet, or Mallock, the Scotch poet, refers
to the superstition in his poem "William and
Margaret " :

"'Twas at the silent solemn hour
When night and morning meet;
In glided Margaret's grimly ghost
And stood at William's feet."

Then Margaret proceeds to reproach her lover itm
his unfaithfulness, which has caused her death:

"'Awake !' she cried, 'thy true love calls.
Come from her midnight grave:
Now let thy pity hear the maid
Thy love refused to save.

138 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

This is the dark and dreary hour

When injured ghosts complain;
When yawning graves give up their dead

To haunt the faithless swain.'"

But while she still upbraids her trembling William
the cock crows :

'" But hark ! the cock has warned me hence;
A long and last adieu !
Come see, false man, how low she lies
Who died for love of you.'"

In his poem, "Mary's Dream," John Lowe
describes a similar incident. In this case, however,
the ghost is a male, the sailor-love of Sweet Mary,
who dreams "of Sandy far at sea." Sandy comes
to her bedside and tells her that he has perished, but

"The storm is past and I at rest; ^

So Mary weep no more for me ! "

But while the ghost is speaking comfort to the girl,

" Loud crowed the cock, the shadow fled,
No more of Sandy could she see;
But soft the passing spirit said,
' Sweet Mary, weep no more for me.'"

Herrick has a passage in one of his " Hesperides,"
in which the cock recalls his mistress while she is
inviting him to Elizium :

" But harke, I heare the Cock,
(The bellman of the night) proclaime the clock
Of late struck one; and now I see the prime

A CHRISTMAS FABLE. I39

Of day break from the pregnant East, 'tis time

I vanish; more I had to say;

But night determines here, Away."

Ben Jonson, in his Masque of Queens, gives the
cock-crow as the signal for witches to cease from
their loathsome practices :

" I last night lay all alone
On the ground to hear the mandrake groan;
And plucked him up though he grew full low;
And as I had done the cock did crow."

In the scene from Hamlet which I have quoted,
Marcellus goes on to relate a pretty fable which,
however poetic it may be, I am glad to say for the
comfort of our slumbers is easily proved untrue —
that at Christmas-time the cock does not cease to
crow throughout the night, so that spirits may not
desecrate the season of our Saviour's birth :

" Marcellus. Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated.
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike.
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm.
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time."

Tennyson, in his " Morte d'Arthur," has a refer-
ence to this poetic fable :

" The cock crew loud: as at that time of year
The lusty bird takes every hour for dawn.

I awoke, and heard indeed
The clear church bells ring in the Christmas morn.''

10

140 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

How often we hear the words " Halcyqn Days"
spoken of without thinking, or perhaps caring to
know, how they entered into our common phrase-
ology. We know the meaning which they convey
— days of tranquillity ; or, as the dictionary tells us,
" days of quiet prosperity." But Halcyon Days are
more than a mere current phrase, they are a link
which unites us with a very ancient superstition.
The halcyon of the ancients was the Kingfisher, that
beautiful, but now unfortunately rare, bird, which
the gun of the collector seems likely to make alto-
gether extinct; and it was the poetical notion of
these people that the kingfishers possessed the
power of keeping the water calm while they built
their nests upon its surface. The days during which
the water was said to remain quiescent were the
seven days before the winter solstice and the seven
days after, and were known as Halcyon Days — days
during which the water remained calm. The ancient
fable associated with the name of these resplendent
birds is replete with a tender charm and pathos
which is worth mentioning in the interest of those
who have not heard it.

Ceyx the King of Trachyn, being disturbed in his
mind respecting the fate of his brother, determines
on consulting the oracle at Claros, and makes known
his intention to his wife, Halcyone. She pleads
with tears that he will take her with him and let
her share by his side the dangers of the long and
hazardous voyage; but Ceyx cannot think of his

HALCYON DAYS. 14I

beloved Halcyone being placed in such a direful
position, and he gently refuses her request. Then
Halcyone seeing that her request will not be granted,
and feeling a presentiment of the fate which is to
overtake her husband, falls at his feet in a swoon.
When she raises her weeping eyes the ship is on the
seas and Ceyx is waving his hand to her in farewell ;
and, watching it till the sails disappear from view,
Halcyone returns to her home and weeps for her
beloved husband. True to the presentiment of
Halcyone, a great storm overtakes the ship on
which Ceyx is journeying to Claros, and, unable to
battle with the waves, it sinks to the bottom of the
ocean. Ceyx, with a few of the sailors who do not
go down with the sunken vessel, clings to a spar
and for a while keeps upon the surface of the water;
but presently a great dark billow overwhelms him,
and he is engulfed. All this while, faithful Halcyone
is praying for the safety of her husband, and making
every preparation for his return before the end of
two months, as he had promised. But the fate of
her husband is made known to her. Morpheus flies
through the dark to her bedside, and taking upon
him the form of the ill-fated Ceyx, tells her that the
prayers she has offered in his behalf have availed
him nothing, for he has perished on his voyage.
Halcyone, on hearing this dire news, is overcome
with anguish. She wildly beats her face and breast,
and rushing to the sea-shore, where she had last
seen her husband when he set sail to Claros, she

142 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

declares that she cannot live without him, and re-
solves to go to him in the sea. But while she is
standing by the side of the sea, she sees a body
floating upon the water, and, as she watches it, the
waves bring it nearer and nearer to her. Then she
recognises in this body the form of her unfortunate
husband, and she springs upon a mole in the sea to
clasp him. But, even as she leaps upon the stones,
wings bear her upon the surface of the water, and
she becomes transformed into a kingfisher. With
her bill she kisses the dead face of her beloved Ceyx ;
with her wings she embraces him, and the gods
having compassion upon her, change her husband
also into a kingfisher so that as birds their love
might remain unchanged. And thereafter, when
they rested upon the face of the waters, the sea
remained calm, and "the passage of the deep was
safe."

As might be supposed, so beautiful and tender a
story has commended itself to the fancy of the poets.
Very few of the many references to the fable must
suffice :

" O magic sleep ! O comfortable bird
That broodest o'er the troubled sea of mind
Till it is hush'd and smooth."— Keats.

" And close beside her lay a delicate fan.
Made of the halcyon's blue wing; and when
She looked upon it, it would calm her thoughts
As that bird calms the oc^xa!'— Longfellow.

FABLES ABOUT KINGFISHERS. I43

"And, over all, the blessed sun,
Telling of halcyon days begun." — D. M. Moir.

" The weary there lay down to rest.
And there the halcyon built her nest."

—J ames Montgomery.

" While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed waves.''

—Milton.

" So shall the Church, thy bright and mystic bride.
Sit on the stormy gulf a halcyon bird of calm."

—H. H. Milman.

" Far, far away, O ye
Halcyons of memory.
Seek some far calmer nest
Than this abandoned breast." — Shelley.

So long as this last-named poet dealt with the
halcyon as a symbol of tranquillity he was safe,
but when he overstepped this limit and introduced
natural history into his poetry, he at once fell
into a great error. Had he watched " two azure
halcyons " procuring their food, he would not have
ventured to write:

" I cannot tell my joy, when, o'er a lake
Upon a drooping bough with night-shade twined,
I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward
And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries.
With quick long beaks, and on the deep there lay
Those lovely forms imagM as in a sky."

"Amber berries" are a very strahge diet for fish-
eating birds !

Figuier, the celebrated naturalist, tells us that to

144 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

the dead body of the kingfisher " the attributes of
turning aside thunderbolts, of giving beauty, peace,
and plenty, and other absurdities were ascribed.
Even now, in some remote provinces in France, the
dead birds are invested with the power of preserving
woollen stuffs from the attacks of moths ; hence
they are called moth-birds by drapers and shop-
keepers."

Another faculty which the dead body of the king-
fisher is said to possess is that of pointing its bill in
the direction from which wind may be expected.
There seems to be a reference to this quaint super-
stition in Dryden's " Hind and Panther," although
no mention is made of the bird itself:

" High on the oak, which never leaf shall bear,
He breathed his last, exposed to open air;
And there his corpse unblessed is hanging still,
To show the change of winds with his prophetic bill."

Dryden is here writing of the martin, but that the
"prophetic bill" has reference to the superstition
mentioned above seems certain, for there is no such
belief associated with the martin.

Of that social, pugnacious little bird the Robin-
Redbreast,

" Sweetest of all the feathered throng,"

many pretty fables are told, and there are no stories
about any of our birds more charming than how the
robin's breast became red. In England there are

LEGENDS OF THE ROBIN. I45

two of these legends, both of which have their
foundations in an act of charity, one to our Saviour,
and the other to poor tormented souls in hell. The
first of these legends is that when the Saviour hung
in agony upon the Cross a sympathetic robin, then a
plain, unattractive little bird, pitied His sufferings
and wrested the thorns from the crown which tore
His brow. In performing this act of charity the
blood from the thorn-marks dyed the bird's breast
red, in memory of which the feathers have ever since
retained this colour.

The American writer, Delle Whitney Norton, has
put this legend into poetry:

" On fair Britannia's isle, bright bird,

A legend strange is told of thee —
'Tis said thy blithesome song was hushed

While Christ toiled up Mount Calvary,
Bowed 'neath the sins of all mankind ;

And humbled to the very dust
By the vile cross, while viler man

Mocked with a crown of thorns the Just.
Pierced by our sorrows, and weighed down

By our transgressions, — faint and weak.
Crushed by an angry judge's frown,

And agonies no word can speak,—
'Twas then, dear bird, the legend says.

That thou from out His crown, didst tear
The thorns, to lighten the distress.

And ease the pain that He must bear,
While pendent from thy tiny beak

The gory points thy bosom pressed.
And crimsoned with thy Saviour's blood

The sober brownness of thy breast !

146 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Since which proud hour for thee and thine,

As an especial sign of grace
God pours Uke sacramental wine

Red signs of favour o'er thy race ! "

The other story is best told in the words of
Whittier :

" My old Welsh neighbour, over the way

Crept slowly out in the sun of Spring,

Pushed from her ears the locks of gray,

And listened to hear the robins sing.

Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped,

And, cruel in sport as boys will be.
Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped

From bough to bough in the apple-tree.

' Nay ! ' said the grandmother, ' have you not heard,

My poor, bad boy ! of the fiery pit,
And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird

Carries the water that quenches it ?

' He brings cool dew in his little bill,

And lets it fall on the souls of sin :
You can see the marks on his red bireast still

Of fires that scorch as he drops it in.

' My poor Bron rhuddyn ! my breast-burned bird.
Singing so sweetly from limb to limb.

Very dear to the heart of our Lord
Is he who pities the lost like Him.'"

In another poem by the same sweet singer of New
England, we are told how the Algonquin Indians
account for the redness of the robin's breast. This
legend is really too romantic to omit, although,

AN INDIAN STORY. I47

according to my first intention, it should not have a
place here :

" Once a great chief left his son, —
Well-beloved, his only one, —
When the boy was well-nigh grown.
In the trial lodge alone.
Left for tortures long and slow
Youths like him must undergo
Who their pride of manhood test,
Lacking water, food, and rest."

And here seven days and seven nights he was kept
until —

" Wrung with pain.
Weak from nature's overstrain,"

he moaned —

" Spare me, father, for I faint ! "

But " the chieftain, haughty eyed," was obdurate,
wishing to see his son a great warrior, and so
replying :

" Better you should starving die
Than that boy and squaw should cry
Shame upon your father's son,"

he left the youth again in the trial lodge alone.
But

" When next morn the sun's first rays
Glistened on the hemlock sprays,"

the chief went to the lodge with food for his brave
lad, he "found the poor boy dead." And as they

148 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

dug a grave for him they saw upon the lodge-top
overhead a bird they had never seen before,

" Preening smooth its breast of red,"

and the bird told them never more to mourn for
him, because, it said, _„

" I, a bird, am still your son."
Then it told them how as a

" ' Friend of man, my song shall cheer
Lodge and corn land ; hovering near
To each wigwam, I shall bring
Tidings of the coming spring.'

Thus the Indian legend saith
How, at first the robin came
With a sweeter life from death
Bird for boy and still the same."

Wordsworth, it would seem, had in his mind the
beautiful English legends of the robin-redbreast
when he wrote :

" Art thou the bird whom man loves best.
The pious bird with the scarlet breast.
Our little English robin?"

And Thomson, similarly, writes of the redbreast as
" Sacred to the household gods."

But there are, perhaps, very few of us who think
of these legends, or have even heard of them, when
we give our warmest affection to this saucy, sociable

THE BEST-LOVED BIRD. I49

bird. It is for some other reason that the redbreast
is universally loved, and that it has been chosen as
an emblem of piety. Probably its trustful, sociable
nature has awakened a responsive chord in our own
hearts, for are we not generally touched by an
appeal to our purest and truest instincts? Other
birds are equally pretty and melodious, but none is
so dear to us as the robin :

" The bird, whom by some name or other,
All men who know thee call thee brother.
The darling of children and men."

How touched were our impressionable little hearts
in our baby days when we listened to the woful tale
of the robin's death and his melancholy interment.
How cordially we detested the sparrow, plain,
chirruping plebeian, for letting his cruel arrow
penetrate the red breast of our poor pet bird; and
we felt a thrill of tender pity when we were told that

" All the birds of the air
Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing
When they heard of the death
Of poor cock robin."

It seemed quite natural that the robin should be
chosen from all other birds to perform the pious act
of covering the poor Babes in the Wood with leaves;
indeed, the robin is the very bird we ourselves would
have chosen had we written the story. Imagine the
giddy tomtit, or the stately wagtail, or the portly
bullfinch, though he too has a red breast, or the

ISO SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

gaudy goldfinch covering the little wanderers with a
funeral pall of leaves and flowers ! No, only the
robin would do. So it is to the robin-redbreast
Herrick appeals for the same kindly office when he
dies:

" Laid out for dead, let thy last kindnesse be
With leaves and mosse-work for to cover me :
And while the Wood-nimphs my cold corps inter,
Sing thou my Dirge, sweet warbling Chorister !
For Epitaph, in Foliage, next write this,
Here, here, the tomb of Robin Herrick is.''

It is surprising how many ot our poets have left us
a memorial of this pretty fable. In addition to the
above, three others must suffice:

" Their little corpse the robin redbreasts found.
And strewed with pious bill the leaves around."— Gav.

" Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover.
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men."

—John Webster.

" The redbreast oft at evening hours
Shall kindly lend his litde aid.
With hoary moss, and gathered flowers.
To deck the ground were thou art laid."

— William Collins.

Webster's association of the Wren with the red-
breast in covering "the bodies of unburied men"
reminds us of the common supposition that Jenny

THE KING OF ALL BIRDS. 151

Wren, as the bird is called, and Cock Robin are
linked together as husband and wife:

" The robin and the wren
Are God Almighty's cock and hen."

Who has ever heard of a hen robin or a cock
wren? But, unfortunately, poor Jenny Wren has
no pretty fables to make her "pious," nor is she
permitted to rank so high in the opinion of mankind
as her "husband,"

" The darling of children and men."

Indeed, all the fables told about her — or had we
not better say him? since he is a king — are very
much the reverse of complimentary. He is supposed
to be an emissary of the devil, and to have obtained
his ancient title of " King of all Birds" by perpetrat-
ing a fraud. As we are told in Grimm's story of
"King Wren":

" In a grand assembly of all the birds of the air, it was
determined that the sovereignty of the feathered tribe should
be conferred upon the one who would fly highest. The
favourite was, of course, the eagle, who at once, and in full
confidence of victory, commenced his flight towards the sun;
when he had vastly distanced all competitors, he proclaimed
with a mighty voice his victory over all things that had
wings. Suddenly, however, the wren, who had secreted
himself under the feathers of the eagle's crest, popped from
his hiding-place, flew a few inches upwards, and chirped out
as loudly as he could, ' Birds, look up and behold your king';
and was elected accordingly.''

This fraudulently obtained title of "King of all

152 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Birds" is of very antique origin. Tradition dates it
as far back as the days of the Druids, and the Manx
name for the bird, Dreatn, is derived from the two
words druai dryw, the Druid's bird. The name of
the wren in several European languages upholds this
kingly title, and at the same time shows that the
source of it must be at least as ancient as tradition
makes it. For example, the Latin name of the bird
is Regulus; the French, Roitelet; Welsh, Bren
(king); Teutonic, Konig Vogel (king bird); Dutch,
Konije (little king).

While referring to this subject in his Collectanea
de Rebus Hibernicis, Colonel Vallency says :

"The Druids represented this as the king of all birds.
The superstitious respect shown to this little bird gave
offence to our first Christian missionaries, and by their
commands he is still hunted and killed by the peasants
on Christmas Day, and on the following (St. Stephen's Day)
he is carried about hung by the leg in the centre of two
hoops crossing each other at right angles, and a procession
made in every village of men, women, and children, singing
an Irish catch, reporting him to be the king of all birds."

One of the verses of this "catch" to which the
writer refers is as follows : —

"The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,

We have caught, St, Stephen's Day, in the furze;
Although he is little, his family's great,
I pray you, good dame, do give us a treat."

The hunting of the wren here alluded to on St.
Stephen's Day, or during Christmas week, was

HUNTING THE WREN. 153

formerly common in Ireland, the Isle of Man, some
counties in England, and in certain parts of the
Continent ; nor is the old custom even yet altogether
obsolete, though it is mainly confined to the senseless
massacre of the birds by schoolboys.

Another reason for the hunting of the wren is
given by Aubrey in his Miscellanies. He says that
after a battle in Ireland, " a party of the Protestants
had been surprised sleeping by the Popish Irish,
were it not for several wrens that just wakened them
by dancing and pecking on the drums as the enemy
were approaching. For this reason the wild Irish
mortally hate these birds to this day, calling them
the devil's servants, and killing them wherever they
can catch them; they teach their children to thrust
them full of thorns ; you'll see sometimes on holidays
a whole parish running like madmen from hedge to
hedge a wren hunting."

Whatever may have been the origin of this quaint
but cruel custom, it spread so quickly that two
centuries ago the inhabitants of villages far enough
remote from Ireland to be uninterested in the squab-
bles between Romanists and Protestants turned the
hunting of the wren into an annual festival. The
custom as it was carried out in the Isle of Man
until comparatively recent days is well described
by George Waldron in his Description of the Isle of
Man. The following extract from this work appears
in the Mona Miscellany., vol. xvi., for the use of
which I am much indebted to Mr. Thomas Cowley,

154 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Ramsey, Isle of Man. The period of which Mr.
Waldron writes was about two centuries ago. He
says:

"On the 24th of December, towards evening, all the
servants in general have a holiday; they go not to bed
all night, but ramble about till the bells ring in all the
churches, which is at twelve o'clock; prayers being over,
they go to hunt the wren, and after having found one of
these poor birds, they kill her, and lay her on a bier with
the utmost solemnity, bringing her to the parish church, and
burying her with a whimsical kind of solemnity, singing
dirges over her in the Manx language, which they call her
knell, after which Christmas begins."

Commenting on this, the editor of the Miscellany,
William Harrison, says:

" This custom of ' Hunting the Wren ' has been a pastime
in the Isle of Man from time immemorial, and is still (1869)
kept up on St Stephen's Day, chiefly by boys, who at early
dawn sally out armed with long sticks, beating the bushes
until they find one of these birds, when they commence
the chase with great shoutings, following it from bush to
bush, and when killed it is suspended in a garland of
ribbons, flowers, and evergreens. The procession then
commences, carrying that 'King of all the Birds,' as the
Druids called it, from house to house, soliciting contribu-
tions, and giving a feather for luck ; these are considered an
effectual preservative from shipwreck, and some fishermen
will not yet venture out to sea without having first provided
themselves with a few of these feathers to ensure their safe
"return. The dreain, or wren's feathers, are considered an
effectual preservative against witchcraft. It was formerly
the custom in the evening to inter the naked body with great
solemnity in a secluded corner of the churchyard, and con-
clude the evening with wrestling and all manner of sports.

A MANX WREN-SONG. 155

" The custom is not peculiar to the Isle of Man, for we find
it mentioned by Sonnini in his travels, that ' the inhabitants
of the town of Cistat, near Marseilles, armed with sabres and
pistols, commence the anniversary by hunting the wren, and
when captured is suspended, as though it were a heavy bur-
den, from the middle of a long pole borne on the shoulders
of two men, carried in procession through the streets, and
weighed on a balance.'

" Crofton Croker, in his Researches in the South of Ireland,
1824, mentions this custom as prevailing there, and in Hall's
Ireland it is also recorded, to which is added the air to the
song as penned by Mr. Alexander D. Roche, as also a
spirited woodcut of the wren-boys with their garland. The
air is also given in Barrow's Mona Melodies, 1820."

There are various versions of this song; one of
these, taken down by Mr. Harrison from a company
of "wren-boys" in 1843, is a curious piece of com-
position. Beginning with the party going to the
woods in search of a wren, the story is sung of its
capture, death, and final consumption. The Manx
air to which the song is sung is a spirited and
"catchy" melody, and has deservedly become
popular in the island. One verse of the song must
suffice as an example of all the others :

"We'll away to the woods, says Robin to Bobbin;
We'll away to the woods, says Richard to Robin;
We'll away to the woods, says Jack of the Land;
We'll away to the woods, says every one."

The next verse consists of the line

"What shall we do there, says Robin to Bobbin,"

II

156 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

repeated as above, and following this comes another
line treated in the same way :

" We will hunt the wren, says Robin to Bobbin,"

and so on all through the song.

A curious feature of "Hunt the Wren," and one to
which the editor of the Miscellany calls attention, is
" that wherever we find this peculiar custom prevail-
ing, it is always attended with appliances, as if the
object sought for was one of extraordinary bulk or
weight, instead of being one of the most diminutive
of our feathered tribe."

Thus we have the lines :

" How shall we get him home? says Robin to Bobbin,"

and the reply in the next verse is :

" We'll hire a cart, says Robin to Bobbin."

Following verses tell how the pigmy bird is boiled
"in the brewery pan," placed therein with "iron
bars and a rope," taken out with "a long pitchfork,"
and eaten with "knives and forks."

In Sonnini's description of the custom in France
he tells us that the wren was hunted with "sabres
and pistols," and when captured was " suspended,
as though it were a heavy burden, from the middle of
a long pole borne on the shoulders of two men."

" The origin of this," says Mr. Harrison, " is not men-
tioned by any writer that I have consulted; it may, perhaps.

WREN-HUNTING ALMOST EXTINCT. 157

be accounted for by the desire to render every homage to so
important a personage as 'the king of all birds,' Who, like
other potentates, requires every appliance that can be
devised to uphold and maintain his dignity; whatever the
origin, however, it is certain that it has continued from the
earliest ages. The old tune of ' Hoist, hoist,' is said to come
from the Anglo-Saxon times, and is the burden of the song
as sung in Devonshire in Christmas week, where the villagers
formerly suspended the wren from a heavy pole and carried
on their shoulders as a mighty burthen. They pretended
to hoist the monstrous bird into a waggon, singing as
follows: —

' I've shot a wren, says Robin to Bobbin;
Hoist! hoist! says Richard to Robin;
Hoist! hoist! says John all alone;
Hoist! hoist! says every one,'"

and so on, alwrays chorusing with affected labour
and exertion, "Hoist! hoist!"

Happily for the preservation of this pretty, restless
little bird, the stupid and wicked custom of hunting
it at Christmas-tide is almost extinct, and will, I hope,
soon be entirely so. In whatever way the custom
originated, nothing good could come of it. Quite
the reverse, it fostered a spirit of wanton destruction,
which, unfortunately, is already too prominent a
characteristic of the average boy, and it was a gross
injustice to the smallest and least harmful of all our
feathered friends. In England, I am glad to say, the
custom never obtained any very great vogue. To
most people little Jenny Wren has always been a
bird to be protected, "an unlucky bird to kill;"
even to desecrate their nests would bring misfor-

158 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

tune to the rash destroyer, for, as I have said
elsewhere —

" The robin and the wren,
Are God Almighty's cock and hen."

" Him that harries their nest.
Never shall his soul have rest;"

or, as an old poet renders the same adage —

" I never take away their nest, nor try
To catch the old ones, lest a friend should die;
Dick took a wren's nest from his cottage side.
And ere a twelvemonth past his mother dy'd."

That prettily-coloured and sweet-voiced bird the
Yellowhammer is another of our feathered friends
who unjustly suffer at the hands of thdughtless
people.

" Fair plumaged bird! cursed by the causeless hate
Of every schoolboy."

Youngsters seem to think they are doing a proper
and natural thing in wounding the bird or ruthlessly
tearing its nest to pieces; and this dislike, sad to
say, in country districts is shared by older people
who should have more sense with the increase of
years. Most probably the persecution of this pretty
and gentle bird has arisen from a stupid old legend
which says that on the first day of May the Devil
inoculates the yellowhammer with three drops of
his own blood. But how many of the boys or men
who persecute the yellowhammer can give any

THE OSTRICH. 159

reason why they do so? They are prejudiced
against it, but they little know that their
prejudice has arisen from so stupid and wicked
a belief!

From our earliest days we have been ready to
accept any strange stories about Ostriches which
our school-books and "popular" works of natural
history have been pleased to tell us. We have
been led to believe that these birds are

" Silliest of the feathered kind,"

and when we have turned to our Bibles and read
that "God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither
hath he imparted to her understanding," we have
considered the matter quite settled. But we
shall do well not to arrive too hastily at any
such conclusion. The ostrich is a bird which has
been very much misunderstood. Its character and
habits were described long before they were
sufficiently investigated, and all sorts of silly
stories were circulated about it, most of which
had only a slight foundation of truth. Now that
the birds are reared on farms by the thousands,
very much after the manner of tame poultry, and
there has been ample opportunity to study their
habits and nature, the exaggerated yarns of an
earlier day are being accepted at their proper
worth. In some respects the ostrich displays a
remarkable lack of intelligence, but the popular

l6o SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

yarn that it hides its head in sand when pursued,
under the fond delusion that because it cannot see
its pursuers therefore they cannot see the bird
itself, is utterly void of truth. When Moore tells
us that

" Whole nations, fooled by falsehood, fear, or pride.
Their ostrich heads in self-illusion hide,"

he merely repeats a common fallacy, and, as a poet,
is ready to introduce a serviceable illustration, for
which he may be excused ; but it is significant that
in the book of Job, where the character of the
ostrich is sketched to some length, no mention is
made of this supposed gross stupidity. The bird's
habit of burying her eggs in sand and leaving them
to hatch by the heat of the sun is mentioned in
several verses: —

" Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or
wings and feathers unto the ostrich?

Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them
in dust,

And forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the
wild beast may break them.

She is hardened against her young ones, as though they
were not hers: her labour is in vain without fear."

In Lamentations there is also a reference to this

habit :

"Even the sea-monsters draw out the breast, they give
suck to their young ones: the daughter of my people is be-
come cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness."

OSTRICHES IN FARMS. l6l

The poets, too, have caught hold of this want of
maternal instinct:

" Hast thou expelled the mother from thy breast.
And to the desert's mercies left thy nest?"

asks Montgomery, and the bird answers :

"Ah ! no; the mother in me knows her part,
Yon glorious sun is warmer than my heart."

But Cowper, giving the bird no opportunity of
speaking for herself, declares :

" The ostrich, silliest of the feathered kind.
And formed of God without a parent's mind,
Commits her eggs, uncautious, to the dust."

Montgomery is the more correct of the two. He
supposes, as it were, that the ostrich in sandy and
warm places uses the earth as an incubator, thus
giving evidence of intelligence rather than a want
of caution or the lack of " a parent's mind." It is
proved beyond question in the great ostrich farms
of South Africa, where the ground is not suited to
incubation, that the ostrich is possessed of highly
developed maternal instincts; indeed, both the cock
and the hen take their proper share in the process of
hatching the eggs, and woe be to any venturesome
stranger who incautiously wanders too near their
nest. At such a time the cock bird becomes a
veritable fury, and one kick from his horned foot
means certain disablement, and very probably death.

l6a SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

In addition to the fable of burying its head in
the sand, the ostrich has derived its character of
stupidity from its habit of swallowing large solid
substances to assist its digestion. Of this habit
very much might be said. Buffon declares that
they would eat pieces of "red-hot iron" in small
quantities; and the Arabs are serious in believing
that their staple diet consists of stones and bits of
iron. Cuvier states that in the stomach of an ostrich
he discovered that not only were pieces of iron
"worn away as they would likely be by trituration
against other hard bodies, but they had been con-
siderably reduced by some digestive juice, and pre-
sented all the evidence of actual corrosion." Dr.
Shaw says that he has seen an ostrich swallow
bullets which came hot from the mould. That
ostriches do actually swallow, and seem to appre-
ciate, pieces of iron and brass I have had the oppor-
tunity of proving to my own satisfaction.

While strolling near a large ostrich farm in
Cape Colony a few years ago, I thought that, as
the chance presented itself, I would put to the
test the stories I had read as a youngster respect-
ing the "digestion of an ostrich," one of my earliest
books on natural history having contained some
of the stories I have mentioned above. There hap-
pened to be at that moment a grand cock bird in
brilliant black and white plumage standing close to
the railings of the farm. Taking some brass military
buttons from my pocket, I threw them, one by one

THE BITTERN. 163

into the enclosure. To my delight, this "steel
digesting bird " lowered his snake-like neck and
swallowed them, then looked up for more. I threw
him a brass military badge, such as soldiers wear on
their collars, and this he also consumed with the
same apparent relish. Then, a young soldier who
was with me, thinking to set the ostrich a task
beyond his power, offered it part of a broken pocket-
knife. To our amazement the ostrich accepted the
gift with the same appreciation he had shown in dis-
posing of the buttons and badge, and we began to
wonder why he did not swallow the railings and
obtain his liberty. Whether he lived to digest the
substantial odds and ends we had given him I cannot
say, but that he actually swallowed them with
apparent enjoyment and a desire "for more" there
cannot be the least doubt; my own eyes were my
proof.

Much more might be written here about the
ostrich, for Arab lore is full of fables concerning
it: that it is the progeny of a camel and a bird —
hence the ancient name Struthio camelus; that it
never drinks water; throws stones at its assailants,
and so on; but enough space has already been de-
voted to this one species, and we have many others
yet to notice.

There is the old tradition which tells us that the
Bittern makes "the quagmire reel" by thrusting its
long bill in the mud and using it as a kind of musical

164 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

instrument. Hence it derives its name of "mere
drum."

" And the bittern sounds his drum
Booming from the sedgy sha.\lov/s."—Sco(t.

"As a bitore bumbleth in the mire." — Chaucer.

Thomson, adopting the old-time error for the
purposes of poetry, writes:

" So that scarce
The bittern knows his time with bill engulpked
To shake the sounding marsh."

The Hoopoe is not a British bird, but as it is
sometimes seen in this country, it will not be out of
place to mention it briefly here. There are few
birds which are credited with more curious attri-
butes and regarded with more superstition than the
hoopoe.

"The Arabs have a superstitious reverence for it," says
Dr. Tristram, "and believing it to possess marvellous medi-
cinal quaUties, they call it the ' doctor bird.' Its head is an
indispensable ingredient in all their charms, and in the
practice of witchcraft. They also believe that it listens to
whispers and betrays secrets, and, what is far more important,
that it has the power of detecting water and of pointing out
hidden wells and springs. These attributes have doubtless
been suggested by the quaint and grotesque movements of
its head and tall crest, which it erects in walking, and then,
with solemn, portentous look, it bends its head down till the
bill touches the ground, raising and depressing the crest at
the same time."

Gilbert White mentions the stately deportment

TELLING THE BEES. 165

of these pretty birds in his entertaining Natural
History :

" The most unusual birds I ever observed in these parts
were a pair of hoopoes {upupa), which came several years
ago in the summer, and frequented an ornamental piece of
ground which joins to my garden for some weeks. They
used to march about in a stately manner, feeding in the walks,
many times in the day; and seemed disposed to breed in
my outlet; but were frighted and persecuted by idle boys,
who would never let them be at rest."

On the Continent the hoopoe is the bird " upon
whose head stands a crested plume," into which,
says the ancient fable, King Tereus was transformed
for his cruelty to trustful Philomela.

There still exist in some of the more remote country
districts quaint old superstitions about Bees which
are not without a certain beauty and romance. One
of these superstitions is that when a death takes
place in the house to which the bees belong, in-
formation must be formally given to the bees, or
they will forsake their hives. Consequently a mem-
ber of the family takes the door-key of the house,
and, tapping three times upon the hives with it,
seriously makes known to the busy little creatures
the sad bereavement which has taken place. There-
upon the bees, having listened to the deputation and
mentally made a note of the sad demise, resolve that
as the melancholy incident was not caused by undue
negligence, and they have been properly informed of

l66 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

it by an accredited representative, they will continue
to fill their storehouses as if nothing had happened.
On the day of the funeral the hives are draped with
black cloth or crape, and in better-class families, who
are not educated sufficiently to be entirely free from
superstition, wine and cake are set apart for the
bees, so that they may, as recognised mourners,
take a full share in the family grief. Similarly, when
a wedding takes place, the bees are properly informed
of the interesting event, and take a fair share in the
general rejoicing, their hives being decorated with
red, which, under the circumstances, superstitious
bee-keepers consider a more suitable colour than
black. Not only in regard to funerals and weddings
are the bees given information of events which are
taking place, but in all matters of serious importance
to their owners they are supplied with all the news
that is considered important.

"Londoners can hardly realise that superstitions about
bird and beast are as rife in country places as they were
in Shakespeare's day," says a writer in a northern daily
paper. "A Bedfordshire woman was telling me the other
day, says a correspondent, how her son had been stung
all over by bees. 'And no other wonder,' she said; 'he
never told them he was going to put them in a new 'ome,
and everybody knows that before you goes to put bees in a
new 'ome you must knock three times on the top of the 'ive,
and tell 'em same as you must tell 'em when any one dies in
the 'ouse. Ef you don't, they'll be spiteful, for bees is^under-
standing creatures, an' knows what you say to them.'"

In

a charming and pathetic poem called "Telling

whittier's poem on the bees. 167

the Bees," Whittier very poetically describes the old
English custom which has been referred to above, a
custom which has also, it appears, been introduced
into America.

After a month's absence ("to love — a year") a
lover returns to Fernside Farm, the home of his
sweetheart:

"Just the same as a month before, —
The house and the trees,
The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,
Nothing changed but the hive of bees.

Before them, under the garden wall,

Forward and back.
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small.

Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Trembling I listened : the summer sun

Had the chill of snow ;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one

Gone on the journey we all must go !

Then I said to myself, ' My Mary weeps

For the dead to-day:
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps

The fret and the pain of his age away.'

But her dog whined low ; on the doorway sill,

With his cane to his chin,
The old man sat ; and the chore-girl still

Sung to the bees stealing out and in.

And the song she was singing ever since

In my ear sounds on :
' Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence !
Mistress Mary is dead and gone I "

l68 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Another notion respecting bees is that when a
farmer's hive dies it will not be long before he him-
self is compelled to remove from his farm. This
belief is not without an element of truth, for a hive
of bees rarely dies unless the season is so bad that
it is disastrous to farming; consequently, where a
farmer holds his farm on a yearly tenancy, it may
follow that he will find it necessary to go elsewhere
to build up his fortune.

It is a strange coincidence that people who dwell
in the country and have the best opportunities of
observing the habits of birds and animals in their
natural surroundings are more superstitious about
them than dwellers in towns. Even at the present
day, as we have already noticed, there linger, among
the older people and in remote country districts,
many curious ideas which a little personal investiga-
tion of the subject lying close at hand would
promptly and entirely dispel. But to go to country
people for a knowledge of natural history is very
much like going to Londoners for information re-
specting the National Gallery, Westminster Abbey,
or the British Museum ; in either case one would
be surprised at the lack of cognition and even of
ordinary interest. Quite recently I heard of a
country woman who was afraid to cross a common
after dark "for fear of the Death's-head moths
stinging her;" and, besides newts, there are many
creatures which are invested, in the vulgar imagi-

THE SHREW-MOUSE. 169

nation, with the power of stinging — lizards, for
instance :

"Their softest touch as smart as lizards' stings!"

The frail, harmless, little Shrew-mouse is another
animal which country people have for centuries re-
garded with aversion. Poor mite! it is not only
harmless, it is useful, timid, weak, and was honoured
by the Egyptians with a place among their sacred
animals. But among country people the shrew has
always had a bad name, and it has not altogether
been lost in the advance of learning. This may be
in some degree due to its offensive odour. In any
case, the unfortunate pigmy is credited with being
able to inflict a poisonous bite, and what is
worse, with causing suffering to animals, and even
the rotting of a limb by crawling over it. Much
more so formerly than now, animals that were stiff
in the joints or lame were said to be " shrew-struck,"
which meant simply that a shrew-mouse had run
over the affected parts. Ridiculous as this super-
stition was, the cure for the malady was equally
ridiculous. This consisted of applying a "shrew-
ash" to the part which had been injured, and a
"shrew-ash" was practically "a hair of the dog."
It was made by boring a hole in an ash-tree, insert-
ing therein a shrew-mouse, sealing the hole with a
wooden peg, and leaving the miserable little creature
to die in its prison. The tree in which this cruel
interment had taken place was then called a "shrew-

170 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

ash," and so long as the tree remained a tree any
twig of it placed on a "shrew-struck" horse, cow,
dog, or any other animal would prove an effectual
remedy. White mentions that near the church at
Selborne "there stood, about twenty years ago, a
very old, grotesque hollow pollard ash, which for
ages had been looked on with no small veneration
as 'a shrew-ash.'" The previous vicar, however,
had a mind above such simple ignorance, and there-
fore, "regardless of the remonstrances of the by-
standers, who interceded in vain for its preservation,
urging its power and efficacy," he had it destroyed.

A similar character has been given to the Gecko, a
species of lizard which is found in Palestine and
Egypt. The natives implicitly believe that the gecko
produces leprous sores by crawling over a person's
body. Not only is this belief an utter fallacy, but
it is moreover without any reasonable foundation,
for the gecko is quite a harmless and inoffensive
reptile. It is, however, a strikingly ugly animal,
moves without the slightest noise, and is nocturnal
in its wanderings. Probably these characteristics,
together with the harsh "clucking" sound, from
which it derives its name, have given rise to the
unjust charges that have been brought against it.

Quite as inaccurate and unwarranted as the super-
stitions of the shrew-mouse and gecko is the sup-
position that the Goatsucker, or Night-jar, drains milk
from the udders of cows and goats, a supposition

CHARGES AGAINST GOATSUCKERS. 171

which, however, is common wherever the birds are
to be found. Nor is* this the only evil practice with
which the goatsucker is charged: it is also said to
infect cows with a fatal malady called puckeridge.
This, of course, is quite an erroneous idea. The
malady is caused by an insect which lays its eggs
along the chine of cattle, where the maggots
when hatched eat their way beneath the hide and
grow to a very large size. Similarly, in some hot
climates there is a small insect called the jigger
which burrows under the skin of people's feet, caus-
ing intense pain, gangrene, and, if a remedy is not
quickly found, even death itself.

There are other superstitions connected with the
goatsucker, each of which stamp it as a bird of ill-
repute. The worst charge against it is that it will
attack young children, which, perhaps it is unneces-
sary to explain, has no foundation in fact. The
goatsucker, like the swallow, is insectivorous, and
therefore a bird which should be prized and pro-
tected. Unlike the swallow, however, it is a bird of
nocturnal habits, and no doubt this fact, together
with its noiseless, ghost-like flight, as in the case of
the owl, has given rise to the superstition that it is a
bird of evil propensities and to be feared.

Referring to the goatsucker's reputation for gorg-
ing itself on milk without making payment in return,
reminds me that the adder and hedgehog have also
obtained the same notoriety. By what method they
commit this act of pilfering I have not been in-

\/

172 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

formed, but nature does not appear to have con-
structed any of the three creatures with a view of
their carrying out the duties of dairymaid in their
own interest. Perhaps the adder is supposed to
adopt the same ingenious scheme as that of a
wonderful lizard which, A Survey of the Wisdom of
God tells us, lives in many parts of Lower Egypt.
The description of this lizard, and its acrobatic
method of obtaining a drink, are well worth reading:

" It resembles a crocodile, only that it is but three or four
feet long, and lives wholly on the land. As it is exceeding
fond of the milk of ewes and she-goats, it makes use of a
remarkable expedient. It twists its long tail round the leg
of the ewe or goat, and so sucks her at his leisure."

A truly marvellous animal, and one which I should
like to see during its business hours ! But what is
the goat or ewe doing meanwhile?

As a contrast to these superstitions, it is pleasing
to know that while so many creatures are supposed
to be able to inflict injury on people or other animals,
or commit acts of pilfering, farmers are quite sure
that the presence of Goats on a farm will keep away
foot-disease. This is the sole reason for which goats
are kept on many farms, but how they perform this
kindly office I have not yet been informed. Quite
recently I mentioned this superstition to a Yorkshire
farmer, and though he himself did not keep a goat
among his stock, he assured me that there was

RATS AND SINKING SHIPS. 173

nothing superstitious about the custom, for it was
well known that foot-disease will not appear among
animals where a goat is kept. The truth of this
assertion he was unable to prove by circumstances
which had come under his own observation; and,
indeed, it would be a very difficult matter to prove.
Only by introducing a goat among animals suffering
from the disease, and carefully noting the effect, could
anything like the truth of the supposition be estab-
lished or contradicted.

Turning to a superstition of quite another kind,
it is a very common belief that Rats will leave a ship
which is destined to become a wreck, or, as is some-
times said, " Rats will leave a sinking ship." But
this is even more nonsensical than the other, for
rats will also leave a burning building, a house
which is being broken up, or any such kind of
danger, so nervous are they of being damaged. Not
long ago I read in a newspaper, the copy of which I
have unfortunately lost, that on a certain night a
colony of rats was seen coming from a vessel which
was moored alongside a dock. They made their
exodus by way of the hawser, and it was well for
them they changed their habitation. The vessel, a
few days later, put out to sea and was lost !

That makes a really charming story, showing how
much more clearly than men a certain despised and
hunted animal may understand, and even anticipate,
the mysterious dispensations of Providence! But

174 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

rats will have to "look to their laurels." Cats are
entering as competitors in this field of presentiment,
and are likely to turn the rats out altogether.

An account was given in 1901 of two cats which
unmistakably gave warning of the accident that
happened to the torpedo-destroyer Salmon — at any
rate, so said some influential papers after the oc-
currence. As the story goes, the Salmon and another
vessel named the Sturgeon were lying side by side in
harbour. On the former "dwelt two cats, who were
the special pets of the crew, and who had never been
known to show the smallest inclination to desert.
But on this particular morning, in spite of being
chased by the crew and worried by the dog, the cats
never faltered in their determination to get off the
Salmon and on to the Stut'geon, and when the first-
named destroyer had weighed anchor for what was
to prove the disastrous voyage, the cats made one
last spring as the vessels separated, and landed
themselves on the Sturgeon's deck."

There ! After this instance of feline presentiment,
any persons who get shipwrecked have only them-
selves to blame. All they have to do to discover
whether their voyage will be prosperous or other-
wise is to take a cat on board and pin their welfare
on its behaviour. If the cat curls comfortably in
front of the cabin fire, all will be well ; if it persists
in jumping ashore, " in spite of being chased by the
crew and worried by the dog," their salvation
depends on jumping ashore after the cat.

children's pretty notions. 175

There is a very pretty superstition among children
that the gaudy Httle insect which is commonly known
as the Ladybird, or Ladycow, is easily frightened on
being told that a catastrophe has happened to her
home. This is a very quaint and childlike notion,
and is mentioned here only because it seems to be
known in every country where the ladybird is found.
The custom among children is to take one of the
little insects in their hand and sing to it a pathetic
ditty which, so far as I can quote it from memory, is
usually worded :

" Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home.
Your house is on fire, and your children are gone."

And when the ditty comes to an end, and the lady-
bird is tossed into the air, the children suppose that
the frightened little creature flies away to her
" home " in terrible anguish, expecting to find it
enveloped in flames, and her offspring burned to
death.

All this is very pretty and childlike in its innocency,
and is a kind of notion which only very precise and
unromantic people would wish to see superseded by
plain matters of fact. Let the little ones keep their
innocent imagination as long as they are able, for all
too soon the charming days of frightened ladybirds
and fairies and Santa Claus pass away, and prosaic,
unromantic reality takes their place.

While walking on the outskirts of Odessa, during
a tour in Russia, with a friend who was born in that

176 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

city, I came across a group of children who were
raising their hands in the air and chanting a peculiar
tune which 1 took to be some national hymn. Being
interested in the actions of the children, and not
understanding the language, I asked my friend for
an explanation, and he replied, "Oh, they are
singing that song about the ladybird."

There is no more beautiful or more poetic story of
any animal than how the Donkey was given the dark
cross-shaped mark upon its back. When Christ was
about to make His entry into Jerusalem, so tradition
says. He chose an ass in preference to any other
beast of burden, because it was a meek and humble
creature and best suited to carry one who "made
Himself of no reputation." But so that it might
for ever more be known that God Himself had ridden
upon the beast. He caused a dark cross to appear
upon its back, typifying the kind of death He died.
Similarly, it is said that the dark spot on a haddock
represents the mark made by Peter's thumb when he
took the fish out of the sea to obtain the tribute
money. It would be a pity to spoil this pretty
notion by suggesting that the haddock was not the
fish which the disciples found so useful at a time of
special need.

The question now arises as to whether I shall
conclude this section of my subject with the two
foregoing pretty fables, or finish it with some
remarks on that familiar butt 'and bone of contention

THE SEA-SERPENT. 177

the Sea-serpent. If I deal with the subject here,
many will say that I should have inserted it in the
next division, " Creatures of the Imagination ; " but
were I to do so, others would at once say the sea-
serpent is no creature of the imagination — it is a
reptile which has an actual existence, and a belief
in its corporality should not be treated as supersti-
tion. In. this dilemma I shall take the course of
writing upon the subject straight away. Of the
sea-serpent very much might be written. This is
also equally true of any other subject about which
little or nothing is known. That the animal has any
actual existence as a serpent is very doubtful, but
that a marine monster of gigantic proportions more
or less solid, and called by the name of " sea-
serpent," is a reality there seems to be ample
evidence to believe.

Many persons who could have no ulterior motive
in creating fairy-tales emphatically assert that they
have seen such a monster, and have gone so far as
to give graphic and minute details of its appearance.
Not only once, but on several occasions, the whole
of a ship's crew has been terrified by the appearance
of some " great denizen of the deep," to which they
have given the common name of sea-serpent, and
not only have they given a realistic description of
the awful monster, but they have even gone so far
as to make a sketch of it — presumably after it had
disappeared. Why should these men put them-
selves to the trouble of concocting a yarn about

178 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

these creatures ? Why should they deliberately set
to work to combine in foisting a lie upon the public ?
What benefit could they possibly derive from such a
course beyond a moment's notoriety ? True, it may
be suggested that the men were honest but mistaken.
That is, however, merely a matter of opinion, and in
no way helps to solve the problem.

There have been sea-serpepts innumerable. The
ancients told many strange stories of great serpents
which lived in the ocean, and now and again,
crawling upon the land, caused fearful havoc before
they retired to their proper element. Such were the
monsters which at the siege of Troy came up from the
sea and crushed to death Laocoon and his two sons.
Coming, however, to modern times, we have
plenty of material to use in a chapter on sea-
serpents ; but only one or two of the many
monsters which have been described at various
times can be mentioned here. In 1752 a marine
monster answering to the accepted likeness of a
sea-serpent was seen and sketched, and a full
description of the animal, together with its likeness,
was put into print. In 1848 also, the same serpent,
or one of its family, was seen by the officers and
crew of H.M.S. Dcedalus, who gave a clear de-
scription of the monster they had seen. A few
years later. Captain Harrington, of the Castilian,
also saw the "serpent," and sent a detailed report
of his observation to the Board of Trade bearing his
own signature and those of his chief officers. In

THE SEA-SERPENT DESCRIBED. 179

1898 still another " serpent " was seen by the whole
of the crew of a Dundee vessel, and their description
of it, together with a sketch made on the spot,
appeared in the daily papers. And now quite
recently yet another monster has been sighted and
graphically described.

Let us take the description of two of these
monsters and compare them. First, the "serpent"
seen by Captain Harrington and the crew of the
Castilian : —

" While myself and officers were standing on the lee side
of the poop looking towards the Island of St. Helena, we
were startled by the sight of a huge marine animal, which
reared its head out of the water within twenty yards of the
ship; when it suddenly disappeared for about half a minute,
and then reappeared, showing us distinctly its neck and
head about ten or twelve feet out of the water. Its head was
shaped like a long nun-buoy, and I suppose the diameter to
have been seven or eight feet in the largest part, with a kind
of scroll or tuft of loose skin encircling it about two feet from
the top. The water was discoloured for several hundred feet
from its head; so much so, that on its first appearance my
impression was that the ship was in broken water produced
by some volcanic agency. But the second appearance com-
pletely dispelled these fears, and assured us that it was a
monster of extraordinary length which appeared to be
moving slowly towards the land. The ship was going too
fast to enable us to reach the masthead in time to form a
correct estimate of its length; but from what we saw from
the deck, we conclude that it must have been over two
hundred feet long. I am convinced that it belonged to the
serpent tribe. It was of a dark colour about the head, and
was covered with several spots.''

Now let us notice the description of the monster

l8o SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

seen by the captain and crew of the Dundee vessel
Dart, in 1898: —

" It resembled nothing we could describe nearer than the
ancient animals of prehistoric existence that we sometimes
find described and illustrated by scientific men. Altogether
it must have been 180 feet long. The head was of a long
tapering shape. The mouth being open, we saw the full size
of it. It must have been large enough to swallow at least a
cow or a horse. The teeth shone in the faint light, and gave
the animal a terrifying appearance. A long flipper-like
appendage seemed to dangle from its body about fifteen or
twenty feet from its head. The eyes shone with a green
light, shifting from green to blue and often crimson, and
drove terror into our hearts. Its body had a mane like a fin
running down the full length of the back and breast. It was
of a dark colour, and unlike any monster we in a natural way
could have dreamed of."

In the face of such minute details as these,
certified in each case by several signatures, it would
be idle to assert that the crews were under a total
misapprehension. It is evident they saw that
"something" which has obtained the popular name
of sea-serpent. Both accounts describe the creature
as "a monster," and after reading them we feel
little inclined to envy the men who were favoured
with a glimpse of it. But the two descriptions,
separated as they are by a break of forty years,
have much more in common than a simple allusion
to the serpent as " a monster." In several details
they bear a striking similarity. One monster, we
are told, had a head shaped like "a long nun-buoy";

TWO ACCOUNTS COMPARED. l8l

the other's head was of "a long tapering shape."
One had "a kind of scroll or tuft of loose skin
encircling it about two feet from the top ;" the other
had "a flipper-like appendage," which "seemed to
dangle about fifteen or twenty feet from its head."
One was "over two hundred feet long;" the other
"must have been i8o feet long." Each of the
monsters was of "a dark colour," and both were
near enough to the vessels to be seen distinctly —
one " within twenty yards," the other so close that
the crew could see the full size of its open mouth.
Of course, it must be understood that in comparing
two descriptions of a marine monster they will not
tally in detail, especially in the matter of figures.
We can fully understand that when an animal of
"fearful and terrifying appearance" makes its
appearance suddenly alongside a ship, the crew are
not to be expected to measure the monster with any
exactness. Taking this into consideration, the two
descriptions have very much in common.

What these apparitions were, however, may
always remain a mystery. That they were sea
monsters having a real existence I personally have
no doubt. We may laugh at the old stories of
travellers landing on the back of a sea-serpent and
hoisting a Union Jack under the impression that
they were " annexing " another new colony for the
Crown, but we cannot so easily dispose of such
detailed and properly attested descriptions as the
foregoing; neither must we be too positive that we

iSg SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

know of the existence of every animal which inhabits
the deep sea.

Numerous have been the attempts made to explain
away sea-serpents — a school of porpoises, sharks,
floating seaweed, a devil-fish trailing its long limbs
behind it, a water-spout, — these are among the efforts
to solve the problem; but those who have been among
the fortunate few to obtain a glimpse of the
mysterious monsters declare that none of these
explanations will fully meet the case, and certainly
they do not explain away the two monsters described
above. We, therefore, who have not been so
fortunate as to see a sea-serpent for ourselves must
patiently reserve our criticism until such time as one
is harpooned and towed into harbour.

CREATURES OF THE
IMAGINATION.

" Far away in the twilight-time
Of every people, in every clime,
Dragons, and griffins, and monsters dire,
Born of water, and air, and fire,
Or nursed, like the python, in the mud
And ooze of the old Deucalion flood,
Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage
Through dusk tradition and ballad age."

— Whittier.

However great a part imagination has played in
crediting certain members of the animal kingdom
with attributes and powers which they do not
possess, the height of superstition is reached in the
belief in monstrosities and creatures which have never
had any real existence. The origin of most of these
fabulous animals is lost in the dim reaches of
antiquity, and only vague guesses can be made in
respect thereof. It may be safely assumed, however,
that many of them have developed by a gradual
process of exaggeration — much in the same way as
the herring on the beach became a whale. Others
have been created by a direct efifort of the imagination.

184 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

Bottlger, in writing of that monster of antiquity the
Griiiin, says it was merely the creation of Indian
tapestry-makers, but that the Greeks, seeing the
tapestry at the court of the King of Persia, thought
the animals depicted upon it were really inhabitants
of India. It seems highly probable, therefore, that
certain other fabulous animals have had a similar
origin; while others again, such as the cockatrice and
the basilisk, owe their creation to an exaggerated
idea of the power of serpents, consequent upon the
utter loathing in which they are universally held.
But it is not my intention here to endeavour to trace
the origin of these creatures of the imagination. In
respect of many ot them the attempt would be futile,
for, if I may so state the case, they have no beginning;
they come up to us vaguely from the antediluvian
age, a combined product of creation and imagination.
Moreover, no good service could be rendered by such
an effort. It will therefore be my purpose to deal
only with such of the fabulous animals as I think are
of special interest by reason of their prominence in
our literature.

It is much to be regretted that several of these
monstrosities have been permitted to enter the pages
of Holy Scripture: in most instances the translation
is an utter violation of the original. Of course the
reason is not far to seek. In the days of the
Authorised Version the creatures to which I am
referring— the cockatrice, dragon, satyr, unicorn, and
Others— were believed to have a real existence, and

THE BASILISK. 185

their place in our sacred writings came largely as a
matter of course, but their presence there to-day
creates a real difficulty.

The Revised Version of the Bible has gone very far
towards removing this difficulty by giving to the
animals wrongly translated their proper names;
even now there are several passages which are
in need of alteration. To any ordinary reader, the
appearance in the sacred writings of creatures which
are nowadays commonly known to have had no real
existence is bewildering, and probably not a little
unsettling. To such a reader my earnest advice is
to study any good Natural History — such, for
instance, as Dr. Tristram's, from which I have more
than once quoted — and his difficulties will quickly be
swept away. The creatures that have caused him
so much perplexity — such as the dragon and the
cockatrice — he will find are merely other names for
animals with which he is, for the most part, quite
familiar.

Basilisk and Cockatrice have now become inter-
changeable names for the same fabulous reptile,
but originally they were distinct. The basilisk, or
regulus of the ancients, was the king of all serpents;
and, according to Pliny, was found in the African
deserts, where it would appear to be a veritable
despot. All other snakes fled from its awful presence
with horrified precipitation; and even the flowers and
fruits perished when touched by the poisonous fumes
of its scorching breath.

l85 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

" What shield of Ajax could avoid their death,
By th' basilisk, whose pestilential breath
Doth pierce firm marble, and whose baneful ey
Wounds with a glance so that the soundest dy ?"

Its progression was majestic in the extreme. It
held itself erect, not trailing its body as in the
manner of other serpents. Its eyes were red and
fiery, its face pointed, and upon its head, as token of
its sovereignty, it wore a crown. Shelley tells us
that its skin was "green and golden," but these
colours are apparently chosen for the sake of
euphony, and not from any intention to describe the
reptile accurately. Far otherwise, however, is the
desire of the sagacious naturalist whose opinions on
several matters of natural history I have introduced
into this volume. He plunges boldly into sc de-
scription of an animal which exists only in imagina-
tion, and his description, to make matters worse, is
plagiaristic: —

"The cockatrice, or basilisk, is a kind of serpent of a reddish
colour, and has a thick body, fiery eyes, and a sharp head, on
which it wears a crest that looks like a crown. It has the
honour to be called the king of serpents, because of its crown
and majestic pace; and also because all other serpents are
said to fly from its presence with dread The cockatrice in
its motion lifts its head and the fore part of its body upwards,
the middle and hinder parts only touching the ground. Its
poison is said to be so extremely strong, that if any person is
bitten by the serpent death speedily takes place."

It is curious how so many writers who undertake

serpents' crests. 187

a description of a serpent portray the reptile as
having a " crest." Here are a few out of many: —

" As when some peasant in a bushy brake,
Has with unwary footing press'd a snake;
He starts aside, astonished when he spies.
His rising crest, blue neck and rolling eyes."

—Dry den ( VirgiVs "jEneid").

" He, bolder now, uncall'd before her stood,
But as in gaze admiring; oft he bow'd
His turret crest, and sleek enamell'd neck.
Fawning; and lick'd the ground whereon she trod."

— Milton.

" The eagle, faint with pain and toil.
Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea
Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil
His adversary, who then reared on high
His red and burning crest, radiant with victory."

— Shelley.

" Soon he reached the fiery serpents

With their blazing crests uplifted."

— Longfellow.

The idea of a " crest " has very probably arisen
from the " hood " or inflation of the neck, which is a
marked feature of some species of snakes when in a
state of excitement. There is no kind of snake that
wears a crest such as is described by the poets
mentioned above, in association with the regal
power of the basilisk. This fact does not, however,
prevent the author of the book I have just mentioned
from publishing an illustration of the basilisk wear-
ing its crown with proper kingly dignity. The

13

l88 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

author in this instance has not been satisfied with
describing the reptile as being " the king of serpents
because of its crown," but he goes to the extreme of
illustrating the creature with a woodcut, in which
we see it with pointed nose, head raised aloft, coils
of body typifying "majestic pace," and a solid
kingly crown, such as the school-book pictures of
our kings have made familiar, perched in a conse-
quential way upon its head.

The terrible power of killing people by the glare
of its eyes, which the ancients attributed to the
basilisk, is mentioned several times in the works of
Shakespeare :

" Here take this too,
It is a basilisk unto mine eye."—" Cymbeline."

" Come basilisk, and kill the innocent gazer with thy sight."

—''Henry VI."

" Would they were basilisks to strike thee dead."

—" Richard III."

It should be understood that the fabulous animal
mentioned here, and frequently met with in early
writings, is not the South American lizard of the
same name.

The Cockatrice, which we now understand to be
the same fabulous reptile as the basilisk, superstition
tells us was produced from a "cock's egg hatched
by a frog!" Could imagination possibly have con-
cocted anything more ludicrous ? In appearance it

THE COCKATRICE. 189

is said to differ in no respect from the basilisk, and it
is credited with the same terrible power of killing
people by its gaze.

" Let them feel the utmost of your crueltyes;
And kill with looks as cockatrices doo." — Spenser.

" Here with a cockatrice' dead killing eye
He raises up himself and makes a pause."

— Shakespeare {"Lucrece").

" A cockatrice hast thou hatch'd to the world
Whos« unavoided eye is murderous,"

Shakespeare (" Richard III.").

The cockatrice is frequently mentioned in Holy
Scripture, and always as a reptile of extreme
malignity :

" Out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice,
and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent." — Isaiah.

"They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spider's web;
he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed
breaketh out into a viper." — Isaiah.

"Behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you,
which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the
'Lord.."— Jeremiah.

It is quite evident that the writers of these and
other passages where the word occurs wished to
depict some reptile of more than ordinary malignity
and venomousness. In the margin of the first two
of the above passages we find the words " or adder";
but the adder is comparatively tame and innocuous
when compared with the terrible reptile described by
the sacred writers. In one of the quotations from

igo SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

the book of Isaiah, the writer speaks of an egg which
being "crushed breaketh out into a viper." This
passage in no way helps us; rather the reverse, for a
viper is a viviparous reptile. The root-word from
which the fabulous cockatrice is taken is also am-
biguous, meaning simply "to hiss." If we turn to
the Revised Version in the hope of finding the difficulty
overcome, we are led into a still deeper perplexity,
for the revisers have simply substituted one fabulous
reptile for another; they have merely altered " cocka-
trice" to "basilisk." Far better would it have
been to translate the root-word into the name of one
of the several venomous snakes which are found in
Egypt and Palestine — the cobra, the horned cerastes,
or, more particularly, on account of its size and
extreme venomousness, the daboia. It is highly
probable that the last-named snake is that which the
sacred writers wished to describe — the snake "which
will not be charmed."

Every nation has its own particular Dragon, or if it
has not a dragon it has a kind of national pet in the
form of some traditionary monster much after the
same type. Go where you will you will find the
brute. Its ugly form can be seen on the Chinese
standards as well as on our own coins; its ancient
haunts are pointed out in nearly every corner of the
globe: there are dragons' caves and dragons' hills
and dragons' mountains innumerable. It figures
under some name or other in every literature — it is in

THE WORLD-WIDE DRAGON. igi

our own Bible. It_ was worshipped in Babylonia in
the days of that empire's greatness, and as far east
as China and India. It is such an ancient beast that
its birth is lost in the mists of antiquity ; but it is also
so modern that it constantly appears as a popular
character in children's books, and its ugly figure is
cunningly used to beautify wares of pottery. There
is no getting rid of the dragon. Most ancient of
beasts, he is still the most modern, and will be the
most lasting. And yet he is only a fabulous brute
— a type, a figure. He represents the power of
evil, and wherever we hear traditionary tales of him
we find that there is another type in contrast, the
power of good, which goes forth to overcome him —
the conflict of Evil with Good, and Good always
gains the victory. Such is the story of the fair
maiden of Drachenfels (or Dragon-field). Once
upon a time, so the story goes, there lived a
monstrous snake (or dragon), which wrought such
havoc in this district on the Rhine that the pure
white maiden went forth from the castle in all her
loveliness and innocency to slay the brute. And the
victory of St. George, our patron saint, the rescue of
Andromeda by the valiant Perseus, Apollo's triumph
over the malignant serpent — all these are but versions
of one common legend, and all have their source in
the Hindoo myth of Chrishna, who tore in pieces the
body of the black and evil serpent which, concealed
in the great river, had poisoned all who drank
thereof.

192 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

And can we not go back to Genesis and find
there the fount from which all these legends have
sprung ? —

" I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head,
and thou shalt bruise his heel."

And then may we not go to the Mount of Calvary,
and in the overwhelming tragedy of the Cross find
there the consummation of all that these myths
and legends have, by a mysterious intuition, been
anticipating and depicting from time immemorial?
Are not the words, "It is finished!" but the
idealism of Chrishna's bloody hands and Apollo's
swift sword ? The victory was won !

" And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which
is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.

And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up,
and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations
no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and
after that he must be loosed a little season."

It is not to be wondered at that when dragon
worship and dragon legends have been almost
world-spread, dragons under various forms should
have found their way into Holy Writ. In the
passage I have just quoted from the Apocalypse
we have the dragon as we find it in the legends I
have referred to — a symbol of Evil which is finally
overcome by the power of Righteousness. But in
the Old Testament the word "dragon" is used
variously to represent an animal which inhabits

OLD TESTAMENT DRAGONS. I93

desert places, an aquatic monster, a large land
reptile, and a serpent. In the first connection,
"dragon" now appears in the Revised Version of
the Old Testament as "jackal," which from its
habit of frequenting "waste places," of "wailing,"
and of " snuffing up the wind," is without doubt
the creature which the sacred writers intended
to represent. In the passages where the name
"dragon" is applied to an inhabitant of the deep
the revisers have adopted the plan of retaining the
old translation and adding a marginal note, " or
sea monsters." There are, however, exceptions to
this, as in Isaiah xxvii. :

" He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.''
In the passage:

" The young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under
feet" — [Psalm xd.),

the word "dragon" has been altered to "serpent";
but in Deuteronomy xxxii., in a verse most
obviously dealing with serpents of a deadly
nature :

" Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom
of asps,"

"dragons" is retained without any marginal
comment whatever.

It is not easy to understand why the revisers
should alter the text in some instances and not in

194 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMAtS.

others. When deaUng with animals which have had
a real existence, and with which the writers them-
selves were doubtlessly conversant, it would have
been better to render the text a little vague rather
than retain the name of a monster that every one
knows is entirely imaginary.

I have not thought it necessary to quote a
description of this legendary monster. The finest
>^I have read, and one which I think cannot be
- ti^/beaten, is Spenser's (Book I., Canto xi.).
-V

The Unicorn is another creature which, in its
generally recognised form, is simply a freak of the
imagination; but the ancients implicitly believed
in the real existence of the animal, and frequent
references are made to it in their writings. Ctesias
said unicorns had white bodies, red heads, blue
eyes, and on their foreheads grew a single horn a
cubit and a half long. " Drinking cups are formed
of these, and those who drink out of them are said
to be subject neither to spasm, nor epilepsy, nor to
the effect of poison." Ctesias said he himself had
seen the horn, which was very heavy and red; but
he did not venture to say he had seen the beast
itself. Pliny called the animal a monoceros, and
described it as having the head of a stag, the body
of a horse, the feet of an elephant, and the tail of a
wild boar, and it had a single horn two cubits long
projecting from the centre of its forehead. In
describing the same animal, -fElian says it was as

THE UNICORN. IQS

big as a full-grown horse, with a mane and yellow
woolly hair of greatest softness, with feet like the
elephant, and the tail of the wild boar. Its horn
was black, growing between the eyebrows, and was
not smooth, but had natural twistings and a sharp
point.

It seems highly probable that the horn which
these writers and "old Father Aristotle " had seen
was the horn or tooth of the Narwhal, which
was highly prized by the ancients, and was called
the tooth of the unicorn. The description as given
above fairly represents the horn of a narwhal which
once belonged to me, though the measurements
are considerably less. The narwhal's tooth was
superstitiously supposed to possess the virtue of
preventing poison taking effect, and we are told that
Charles IX., fearful of being treacherously poisoned,
was in the habit of placing in his wine-cup a piece of
the "unicorn's tooth" to counteract the effect of
any poison inserted therein.

It is pretty much after the description of the animal
given above that the unicorn now appears as the
left-hand supporter of our British coat-of-arms.

Frequent references are made in the Old Testa-
ment to a creature called a unicorn, and in all
instances it represents an animal of great strength
and ferocity, but strangely enough an animal pos-
sessing more than one horn :

" He hath as it were the strength of an unicorn."

— Numbers.

196 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy
crib?"— >*.

" His horns are like the horns of unicorns : with them
he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth."
— Deuteronomy.

" Save me from the lion's mouth : for thou hast heard me
from the horns of the unicorns."— /"ja/wzj.

There is every reason to suppose that the animal
which the Old Testament writers intended should be
recognised in the above passages was the Reem, a
species of wild-ox which was formerly abundant all
over Palestine, and indeed all over Europe, including
our own islands. It was a beast of immense
strength and great length of horn. To the Romans
it was known as the Urus, to the old Germans as
the Auerochs, but has now practically been hunted
out of existence.

" I clothed myself in thick hunting-clothes
Fit for the chase of the urox or buffle."

— Browning.

In the Revised Version the word "unicorn" has
in every instance been altered to " wild-ox."

There is still another fabulous creature which has
found its way into Holy Scripture without any ade-
quate reason, that is the Satyr. The Satyrs in
Greek and Roman mythology were a race of wood-
land divinities who are invariably associated with
the worship of Bacchus. They were popularly sup-

SATYRS, HE-GOATS, OR DEVILS. I97

posed to be the offspring of Mercury and Iphthime,
or of the naiads, and were ugly, animal-like creatures
with flat noses, large ears, and horns upon their
foreheads. How came these hideous creatures, then,
into the book of Isaiah ? —

"Their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls
shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there."

" The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the
wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his
fellow."

The marginal notes to these passages in the
Revised Version give the alternative of regarding
the satyrs as "he-goats," which is the meaning of
the original; but the surroundings in which the "he-
goats" are placed, their dancing and crying, seem
to suggest that some other creature is intended.
When we turn to Leviticus we find that the same
word is translated "devils," and it is not improb-
able that Isaiah wished to describe some fabulous
creature or other, which, according to the popular
belief of the times, inhabited all ruins and waste
places. This view is made stronger by the fact that
in the second of the above passages, if we continue
the reading, we find that together with the satyr is
Lilith the night-monster, a fabulous bird similar to
our "night-crow," or " night- raven," of which I
shall havp more to say later. The question is, how-
ever, a difficult one to decide. Another view is, that
baboons and not he-goats are the animals which the

igS SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

prophet wished to describe, and, from his reference
to their "dancing" and "crying," this translation
is just as likely as the other.

In South Africa I have many times watched these
sportive animals leaping and gambolling among
the rocks, or, as Isaiah puts it, "dancing," and
have listened to their wild sounds of " ba-hoo,
ba-hoo," as they "cried to their fellows." The
desolation of Babylon and Idumea would be pre-
cisely the kind of l6nely surroundings they would
delight in.

Leaving the fabulous animals of the Bible, we now
come to the Phoenix. Perhaps no other fabulous
creature has given more opportunity for poetic
imagery than this remarkable bird. Poetry abounds
with references to it; the Roman emperors stamped
its figure upon their coins, typifying a new and
glorious era under their rule; preachers use it as a
symbol of immortality, the death of the human body,
and its resurrection to a perfect and eternal life;
a well-known insurance society has chosen it as its
emblem, and portrays the wonderful bird in lurid
colours proceeding from the midst of brilliant smoke
and flame. This bird is said to have been a native
of Arabia. In appearance it was like an eagle, but
its plumage was brilliant with red and gold. Accord-
ing to one account, it came to Egypt every five
hundred years to the sanctuary dedicated to it
there. The bird is said by ancient writers to have

THE PHCENIX. I99

appeared four times in Egypt, the last visit being
under Tiberius in the year 34 a.d.

" To all the fowls he seems
A phoenix, gazed by all, as that sole bird
When, to enshrine his relics in the sun's
Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes flies.''

— Milton.

In the shrine of the temple it placed the body of

its dead parent, enclosed in a large &%^ made of

myrrh. When it felt its own end drawing near, it

built itself a nest, to which it gave the power of

generation, so that when its own demise had taken

place another phoenix might rise to a new life from

the same nest. This is one of the several fables of

the phoenix. Another is that a worm proceeded from

the body of the dead bird and developed into another

phcenix :

" Suddaine I beheld
Where, tumbling through the ayre in firie fold.
All flaming down she on the plaine was felde;
And soon her body turned to ashes colde.
I saw the foule, that doth the light despise.
Out of her dust like to a worm arise." — Spenser.

But neither of these birds is quite the bird with
which we have become familiar in picture and quota-
tion. Our phcenix is a bird which, when grown to
the age of five hundred years — a tolerably good
age even for a fabulous bird — and conscious of its
approaching death, built for itself a funeral pyre of
choice woods and sweet-smelling gums, beat forth
devouring flames with its wings, and, being con-

200 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

sumed, rose from its own ashes resplendent in new-
ness of life :

" My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth
A bird that will revenge upon you all."

— Shakespeare.
" And that which was of wonder most,

The phoenix left sweet Arable;
And on a caedar on this coast
Built up her tombe of spicerie.
As I conjectured by the same
Preparde to take her dying flame."

— Matthew Roy don.

" Sleep on, in visions of odours rest.
In balmier airs than ever yet stirr'd
Th' enchanted pile of that lonely bird,
Who sings at the last his own death lay.
And in music and perfume dies away." — Moore.

" And glory, like the phoenix 'midst her fires,
Exhales her odours, blazes and expires."

" Behold her statue placed in glory's niche;
Her fetters burst, and just released from prison,
A virgin phoenix from her ashes risen." — Byron.

"But when I am consumed with the Fire,
Give me new Phoenix-wings to fly at my desire."

— Keats.
" In death I thrive:
And like a Phenix re-aspire
From out my Narde, and Fun'rall fire."

— Herrick.

The Griffin, which, like its relative the dragon, has
found a permanent place in English art, because of
its adaptability to design, deserves a paragraph to

ORIGIN OF THE GRIFFIN. 201

itself. As I have already pointed out, the griffin
was in the first place the creation of Indian tapestry-
workers, but being seen in their designs by Greeks
at the Persian court, the griffin became firmly estab-
lished as a creature having a real existence. So
real was its existence, indeed, that the same ancient
writers who were intrepid enough to describe the
unicorn did not hesitate to give a description of the
griffin. Ctesias says that the brute was so strong
that it gained the victory over all other animals with
the exception of the elephant and lion. In appear-
ance it was very gorgeous. The feathers on its
neck were blue and shining, its eyes were red and
fiery, and it had the beak of an eagle, ^lian makes
it a still more brilliant monster. The feathers on its
back, he says, were black, those on its breast red,
and it had white feathers upon its wings. The
griffin was supposed to build its nest of solid gold
in the mountains of India, which was its native
place. It could be easily tamed — when taken very
young! Though a native of India, the monster is
alleged to have found its way to England — at least
on one occasion.

A man taking a walk, some centuries ago, in
Leicestershire spied one of these terrible creatures
stooping to drink at a pond, and tradition says that
the man was very much upset. The place where
the p^riffin was seen subsequently took its name from
the monster, and the village to this day is called
Griffidam.

202 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

The appearance of the griffin, according to our
modern idea, as may be seen from the rearing
monstrosity near the Law Courts, does not alto-
gether coincide with the description given by ancient
writers. It is now usually represented with the
body, feet, and claws of a lion, th^ head and wings
of an eagle, the ears of a horse, a stiff, bristling, fish-
like mane, and feathers upon its back. It is pre-
cisely such a creature as a distorted mind might
conjure up towards the early hours of the morning,
or what might be the outcome of a deliberate in-
tention to create something that was hideous and
vile. John Bunyan succeeded brilliantly when he
set to work to manufacture the monster ApoUyon :

" The monster was most hideous to behold; it was clothed
with scales like a fish (and they are his pride): he had wings
like a dragon, feet like a bear, and out of his belly came
forth fire and smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of
a lion.''

Of a similar kind was the beast which appeared to
St. John in his great vision at Patmos:

"A beast . . . having seven heads and ten horns, and
upon his horns ten crowns . . . and the beast which I saw
was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a
bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion."

No less horrible are the Harpies described in
Virgil's ^neid:

" Monsters more fierce offended Heav'n ne'er sent
From hell's abyss."

LILITH. 203

" From the mountain-tops, with hideous cry,
And clatt'ring wings, the hungry Harpies fly :
They snatch the meat, defiling all they find.
And, parting, leave a loathsome stench behind."

And of the same extravagant and hideous kidney
are chimeras, hydras, ghouls, gorgons, and many
another vile product of a twisted imagination which
I have neither the space nor the inclination to de-
scribe.

I must, however, before bringing to a conclusion
this division of my subject, fulfil the promise I made
to refer to Lilith or the "night monster'' of the
Old Testament.

In the authorised version of Isaiah xxxiv. 14 there
is a passage reading as follows :

" The screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself
a place of rest.''

In the Revised Version the words '• screech owl"
are rendered " night monster," with the marginal
note Lilith. This is the only place in which ' ' Lilith "
is mentioned, and a very interesting question is
raised by the translation of it. According to the
Rabbinical idea, Lilith is a spectre in the figure
of a woman who, entering houses in the dead of
night, seizes upon little children and bears them
away to murder them. Now, if we turn to the
Vulgate version of the Bible, we shall find the above
passage rendered :

14

2Q4 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

"There hath the lamia lain down and found rest for
herself."

Here we have a similar meaning, the Lilith in this
case becoming a lamia or witch. It is quite evident,
therefore, that the creature concerned is a "monster"
of evil disposition, and one that is, in popular estima-
tion, to be dreaded. But the passage is far too
vague to be able definitely to say what form the
"night monster" takes. In almost every country
there is "a terror by night," which takes the form
of a bird, or beast, or " bogie," or something
indefinite, but nevertheless horrible and terrifying.
Sometimes it is an evil spirit which assumes animal
form to perpetrate its villainies. In the East such
monsters abound in popular imagination. While in
South Africa, I was told about a "birdof night" whose
scream, as it passed over the Boers' houses, made
the inhabitants shiver in their beds. In England the
"night-crow" or "night-raven" formerly created
the same terror, though it is more than probable that
the monster was nothing worse than some harmless
nocturnal bird ; at any rate, there is no actual night-
crow or night-raven in natural history. Several of
our poets mention this "terror by night," and its
associations mark it as an uncanny creature of odious
repute :

" The owl shriek'd at thy birth — an evil sign ;
The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time :
Dogs howl'd and hideous tempests shook down trees ;
The raven rook'd her on the chimney top."

— Shakespeare.

CREATION AT AN END. 205

" Here no night-ravenes lodge more black than pitch."

— Spenser,

" The shrieks of luckless owls
We hear, and croaking night-crows in the air."

—Jonson.

'"Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy !
Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings." — Milton.

With these quotations we must leave the subject.
Whether the prophet intended to represent a night
monster or a screech owl is not of very great
moment, for either fits adequately into the scene of
desolation which he so stror^gly depicts.

It will be seen clearly, I hope, from the examples
I have given in this last division of my subject, how
busy in the past has been man's imagination in filling
the earth with strange and mysterious creatures. To
endeavour to trace to their fountain-head the forces
which have been at work in the creation of these
monsters, and in forming the superstitions which I
have mentioned in the previous chapters, would be
futile ; — fear, wonder, reverence, aspiration, all these
influences have had a place.

But the days of creation are at an end. If I may
put it so, we are resting now on " the laurels of the
past." Men in the days that are gone have done
wondrous things with their imagination, and we of a
more prosaic, because perhaps more learned age,

206 SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS.

cease to create for ourselves, and look upon the
imaginings of our forefathers with wondering in-
terest. But much of the superstition we have
"become heirs to" is likely to die a hard death.
Education has done much, but, as I said at the
outset of my writing, education is not of itself a
power which will altogether eradicate superstition.
Those who can lay claim to a wide knowledge of
general subjects are not infrequently superstitious
at heart. Nothing but a personal interest and
knowledge of the wonders which abound in natural
history will wipe out the errors. What an en-
trancing subject Hesi at our hands waiting for our
investigation! There is no subject under heaven
which will give more pleasure or lasting and real
profit than that of Natural History. The world,
with its marvellous animal life, can have no real
beauty or significance for the man who has never
gone deeper than the mere outward, humdrum afl^airs
of life, who has never examined the manifold wonders
which abound in the Divine Creation. It requires
no imagination, no superstition, to make this Crea-
tion glorious! Let us take the simplest flower in
the hedgerow, or the frailest insect in the grass,
or the ten^erest shell in the depths of the ocean, and
meditating thereon, we shall stand silent and awed
in the presence of Eternal Wisdom.

INDEX.

Adder, 113, 171, 189
Adder, deaf, 107
Ape, 197
ApoUyon, 202
Asp, 96, loi
Ass, 176
Auguries of birds, 13

Baboon, 197
Basilisk, 185
Bee, 165

Birds of Paradise, 86
Bittern, 163
Blindworm, 107, 109

Cat, as a barometer, 63

black, 57

reverence for, 58

Chameleon, 82

Chough, 23

Cock, 136

Cockatrice, 185, 188

Creatures of the imagination,

Crest, 187

Crocodile, 84

Crossbill, 134

Crow, 19

Cuckoo, S3

Daw, 24
Death-watch, 36
Death's-head moth, 168
--Dog, 8, 38
Donkey, 17°
Dragon, 190

183

Earwig, 62

Frog, 73

Gecko, 170
Goat, 172
Goat, he-, 197
Goatsucker, 170
Good omens, 45
Griffin, 184, 200

Haddock, 176
Halcyon, 140
Harpy, 202
Hedgehog, 171
Hoopoe, 32, 164
Hysena, 87

III omens, 9

Jackal, 193
Jackdaw, 23
Jay, 24

Kingfisher, 140

Ladybird, 175
Lamia, 204
Lapwing, 31
Lilith, 197, 203
Lizard, 169
Lizard, Egyptian, 172

Magpie, 24
Martin, 49, 117

208

INDEX.

Newt, 8o
Nightingale, 53

against a thorn, 126

in love with rose, 123

lovelorn, 125

music contest, 127

song of, 130

Night-crow, 204
Nightjar, 170
Night-monster, 197, 203
Night-raven, 204
Nostrums, 5

Ostrich, appetite of, 162

cruelty of, 160

stupidity of, 159

Owl, 25

screech, 27, 203

Peacock, 135
Pelican, 131
Petrel, stormy, 33
Philomela, 119
Phoenix, 198
Pigeon, 34
Plover, 33

Rat, 173

Rattlesnalie, 102, 112
Raven, 9, 15
Robin, 51

legends of, 145

Rook, 22

Salamander, 77
Satyr, 196

Screech-owl, 27, 203
Sea-monster, 177, 193
Sea-serpent, 177
Serpent, 88, 193
Seven whistlers, 4

Shark, 42
Shrew-ash, 169
Shrew-mouse, 169
-Signs and omens, 6
Slowworm, 107, 109
Soothsaying, 14
Snail, 87
Snake, 88, 190

charming, 105

fascination, loi

fear of, 88, 91

poison, 112

slimy, 95

sting of, 97

stories of, 92, 102

Spider, 59
Stork, 45
Stormy petrel, 33
•Superstition, cause of, I, 205

world-wide, 2

Swallow, 35, 48

legends of, 49, 118

torpidity of, 113

"lucky" bird, 49

Swan, 132

Tadpole, 75, 76
Toad, entombed, 70

jewel in head of, 64

venomous, 65

Unicorn, 194

Viper, 96, 98, 113, 190

Wren, 31, 51

hunting the, 152

king of birds, 151

Wild-ox, 196

Yellowhammer, 158

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LANDSEER, Sir Edwin. By the Editor.

" This little volume may rank as the most complete account ol
Land seer that the world is likely to possess." — Times.

REYNOLDS, Sir Joshua. By Elsa d'Esterrk-Kej;ling.

"To the series entitled 'The Makers of British Art' Miss Elsa
d'Esterre-Keeling contributes an admirable little volume on Sir
Joshua Reynolds. Miss Keeling's style is sprightly and epigrammatic,
and her judgments are well considered." — Dai/y Telegraph.

TURNER, J. M. W. By Robert Chignell, Author of
" The Life and Paintings of Vicat Cole, R. A."

" Mr. Chignell's sketch of Turner's life and career is comparatively
orief. But it is not superficial. It delineates the man Turner as he
was, a man of splendid intelligence, of inexhaustible kindness, loyalty,
and generous appreciation of the work of his fellow-artists." — Daily

News,

ROMNEY, George. By Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart.,
F.R.S., M.R
" Likely to remain the best account of the painter's life. " — Atkenaum.

WILKIE, Sir David. By Professor Bayne.

CONSTABLE, John. By the Right Hon. Lord Windsor.

RAEBURN, Sir Henry. By Edward Pinnington,

IN PREPARATION.

GAINSBOROUGH-MILLAIS-HOGARTH-LEIGHTON-
HENRY MOORE.

The Walter Scott PaBLisHiNG Company, Limited,

LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.

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